


The Demon's Valentine: The Fairest One of All II

by Ellen_Weaver



Series: The Fairest One of All [2]
Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Dominance/submission, F/M, Power Play, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:43:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 63,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9978905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellen_Weaver/pseuds/Ellen_Weaver
Summary: After three years' grace and three years without wishes, the Goblin King returns to play a third game of magic, power, and desire with Sarah Williams. But this time, he's determined to win her over, and will not scruple to invoke lust in the place of love. Rated M for sexual content.This story is a sequel to "The Fairest One of All" which can be found both at FF and AO3.





	1. A Knock at the Door

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 1:**  
**David Bowie: "Valentine's Day"**  
**Bob Dylan: "Knocking at Heaven's Door"**

* * *

"Yes," she said to him.… and in that moment she knew it was a dream, because she had woken up.

Jareth. Jareth.

Sarah Williams lay curled under the warmth of her quilt and kept her eyes closed. She let the memory of the dream drain past her like a hot bath of scented water.

"Yes," she had said to him. His arms had been hugging her, his chest pressed to her back, his erection a threatening, slowly warming heat against the base of her spine. He had been speaking to her in a voice that wasn't so much soft as it was quiet, a purring engine of meaning that lent the formless dark a style of comfort… and anticipation of other beginnings that might come in the dark.

He had asked her a question, smoothing her hair off her neck, planting one sharp kiss there…and she had answered yes.

She rolled over and thumped her head against her pillow. "Oh, no," she moaned into its cotton-stuffed depths. "No. No, no, no. I meant no."

"What's said is _said_ ," she imagined him replying, and she squeezed her eyes tight, hating the fact that, dream or real, Jareth was right. She'd said yes.

And she couldn't remember what she'd said yes to.

Blearily, angrily, she slid out of her narrow dorm bed and plugged in her electric teapot, and then folded herself back into the sandwich of its warmth to wait for the water to boil. Swayer Hall was the second-oldest dormitory at Triptoleme University, with a notoriously unreliable furnace in the late winter months. Like beggars, sophomores could not be choosers, and today was a wonky furnace day. Today was going to be wonky, full stop. She slipped her arm out of the blankets and grabbed her phone, and called the only person who would come out in the freezing Saturday-morning February weather to give her any constructive help, the only person who would believe that Sarah's dream of the Goblin King was an action item on their personal agenda.

"It's _him_ ," Sarah practically spat over the line. "He's back in my life. Can you come over?"

"Give me five," her friend replied.

"Bring snacks," Sarah added before the call ended, without much hope that a decent breakfast might be realized.

The first wisps of steam began to rise from the teapot's plastic spout, and the radiator began clanking. She would be warm soon. She might be too warm, soon. Everyone she cared about might be too warm. After all, Jareth was fire, and what he wanted most was to set the world on fire. And he saw her as good kindling. In his opinion, that was what witches were for.

If you had to trace it back to a beginning, to an initial spark that set her soul to burning, it probably began with a bad wish she'd made, at the age of sixteen, demanding that the King of the Goblins take away her nasty screaming baby brother away. What had ensued was a series of tests and lessons about the nature of words, power, magic… and sex. Jareth had woken her body to her first awareness of sex as a state of being. He had strummed her soul into the music of desire as knowingly as a rock star strumming a cherry guitar on a stage to the screams of adoring fans. It had been all the more powerful a sexual awakening because he'd also obliquely offered to give her practical instruction to go along with the theory he'd delivered. She'd wanted to fuck him; after meeting him she had known for the first time what it was to want to fuck. To want. To fuck. That time, she'd at least had the sense to say no.

What in hell had she said yes to?

In the end, she'd been able to rise to the challenge and defeat the Goblin King; she had returned safely to her life and her bedroom with her baby brother in tow. No one in her family had been the wiser, except perhaps her stepmother, Irene, who slowly acknowledged new and better patterns in her difficult stepdaughter's behavior. Sarah had been changed by her experience—not in any fundamental way that changed her nature or herself. Rather, she'd been changed in her ability to make the right choices. She'd been changed in the way she saw her responsibilities to others. She'd been changed in the way she judged other people's choices. She'd judged her mother's choices to abandon her and pursue a glamorous career and equally glamorous men. She'd judged her mother. She had removed all the pictures and press-clippings and playbills that celebrated Linda Williams' bad choices from daily viewing, keeping only a small photo of herself, her mother, and her dog Merlin up on her vanity mirror. At that point, she had still loved her mother. These days, she mostly didn't. But that had come later.

Six months after her adventure in the labyrinth, Sarah had met the Goblin King again. Unwished-for and unexpected, he had greeted her with spread thighs in her mother's New York apartment, a carafe of mulled wine in his hand and honeyed propositions on his tongue. Things had become more complicated after that, and Sarah Williams had come to understand that the labyrinth had only been a prelude to a deeper game, a more complex story. Several things had happened that Yuletide in short order: Sarah had discovered that her mother was an honest-to-God witch, that Jareth was a demonic familiar and her mother's slave, and that each were determined to lay claim to her nascent witch's power for their own selfish ends.

The outcome of that story had been mixed for all parties involved. Her mother, using her considerable witchcraft, had attempted to steal Sarah's body to keep as her own as she had done with twelve generations of daughters. Jareth had led a rebellion of the entire coven's spirit-slaves, at the cost of many human lives. An Elf was set loose on the streets of New York. There had been an explosion. And somewhere along the way, Sarah had managed to keep herself for herself, body and soul, thwarting her dangerous mother and nullifying her power, and refusing to submit herself—for the second time!—to the Goblin King's rule in exchange for all the power and magic he had to offer as her slave.

She'd walked away from that one. No one could blame her for walking away. But the Goblin King had informed her, after she banished him, that he couldn't be banished forever.

"Beloved," he had written in letters burned through a length of silk ribbon. He'd given her this love-note, this warning, mere hours after she had thought to leave him behind. "Beloved. We play our game a third time. Expect me the winner. Expect me. J."

She'd bought herself three years of grace and paid for it with her literal blood. It hadn't been wasted time. She wasn't the naif she'd been at sixteen. She didn't keep the kind of secrets she used to. She had trusted her father enough to tell him the entire sordid, unbelievable story. And he had been good enough to believe her. She had spent the past three years honing her witch's powers, living a life without Jareth, living a life without speaking a wish out loud for fear he'd grant it and demand the price owing for his service. But now, with the dream of him still warm over her body like the trace of a tongue, she knew that the time had run out. The hour was striking thirteen. Any moment, he'd be back to play her again. And this time, she was afraid that she'd sing to his tune.

The teakettle screamed like a woman in orgasm. At that moment, there was a knock at her door and a well-known man's voice calling her name, asking for entry. At that moment, she remembered Jareth's question.

"Sarah, you once promised me that you would keep me fed if I would keep you warm. But I'm terribly hungry, and you're awfully cold. Will you let me warm you?"

And she'd said yes.

"Damnable hell," Sarah muttered, abandoning the bed to open the door. She already knew who it was, knocking for her. After all, she'd called him.


	2. Tea and Antipathy

 

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 2:**  
**The Sundays: "Wild Horses"  
David Bowie: "Boss of Me"**

* * *

"You could just come in, you know," Sarah said, after she opened the door. "It's unlocked."

"Spare me the whining, o-my-Queen. You know what happened the last time you invited someone in without checking who it was." She did. A vexatious spirit had travelled across her words like a tightrope into reality. It hadn't been very powerful, but it'd been malicious. It had taken days to find it and disentangle it from a classroom's AV equipment where it had taken up residence. Why did pesky little entities enjoy messing with electronic equipment so much? Why did anything do anything?

"Point taken," Sarah said.

"So can I come in, or what?" He offered forth a half-full party-sized bag of Chex mix. "Milady requested snacks."

"Yep," Sarah said, taking possession of the bag and moving out of the doorway. "You want some?"

"No. I only keep this crap around because you keep asking for it."

Apollonaire Van Knecht was that rarest of creatures, a male witch. Birth had blessed him liberally with physical beauty. He was tall, lean-limbed and graceful. His ash-brown hair fell straight down over his skull to the nape of his neck. He had a good voice, one that was pleasant to listen to, even when he said outrageous or disgusting things. Sarah would have called him the most handsome man she knew, if it weren't for the scar. Looped scrawls of flesh like stretched bread-dough twisted from temple to chin on the left side of his face. Jareth had done that to Apollonaire Van Knecht's face. Polly had been so badly burned that even a combination of two surgeries and his own considerable magic hadn't been able to completely erase the damage.

Yet somehow, the scar didn't diminish his allure. His marring had only been skin deep. Polly was powerful. Sarah wondered if any of his frequently-exchanged sex partners (boy or girl, their names were "Kitten." He always called them "Kitten") ever sensed the incredible supernatural power Polly possessed, if that was what drew them to him. He was so cold and indifferent to everything and everyone. They wandered away when Polly grew bored, seemingly uncertain if they had truly been his kitten, or just imagined it. Sarah didn't mind this precisely, so long as he didn't use the magic of command to force them. She had told him he wasn't to use magic to beguile them, not ever, not while she was his superior. And yet, they came to him anyway. He never seemed to sleep alone. She wondered now if it was the feather-tip of jealousy, that a troop of kittens, interchangeable, were invited to share Polly's bed when she never had been.

Polly took up his customary spot in her room: up on the window-seat, fiddling with the pocket of his long coat where he kept his cigarettes. Normally he'd hold off for twenty minutes before asking her permission to smoke in her room. She handed him the Snapple bottle she reserved for his butts.

"Go ahead and smoke," Sarah said, pouring hot water over a teabag for herself, and over a shaken-out dose of instant coffee for Polly, who despised tea and most other beverages and most other things in life. He hadn't scrupled to do more than put on his coat and shoes; he was wearing soft grey pajama bottoms, a t-shirt, and no socks. She'd definitely woken him up; he'd probably used magic to arrive more quickly than the ten-minute walk from his dorm would have allowed. "You've earned it."

"Thank you," Polly said, but he played with his pack of cigarettes instead, rubbing his fingers and thumb over the cellophane. He didn't smoke; he watched her. She didn't speak; she watched him. They stared at each other with the same clear-eyed intensity of lovers or deadly enemies, though they were neither to each other. Perhaps they should have been. The first time Sarah had met Polly, he had demanded that she show him her tits and jerk him off. She had demanded his nose to break with the business end of a payphone's handset.

Of course, after that, things had changed. Too much had happened that night not to change quite a few first impressions. He'd assisted with banishing the Elf, and he'd given her good advice on how to avert Jareth's dangerous and fixated attention. Most importantly, at a time when she was alone and frightened and in need of support, he'd acknowledged her as his superior, queen of the coven. Out of the twelve other survivors of her mother's coven, only Polly and Nan Bullen had pledged their fealty to Sarah. Polly, the consummate politician, was certain they'd come around in a few more years, once—in his words—it became apparent that no other coven would have them without their mothers' or grandmothers' prestige, or with their downtrodden reputation. Losing control of familiar spirits, as her mother's coven had done so completely, was a sign of deplorable weakness. It was Polly who'd suggested Triptoleme University to Sarah, and then chosen to enroll there himself. By hook or by crook, he'd gotten Nan Bullen to transfer there as well. So Sarah had come to… if not exactly trust Polly, then to rely on him. Even to like him. Even to admire him, as she was doing now.

"Well?" Polly asked, cracking the ancient window and lighting up. "Are you going to tell me what happened, or are you just going to stare at me?" He turned so that only the ruined side of his face showed.

He had never attempted to disguise the burn with a simple glamour. Sarah had respected that for a long time, seeing it as a form of stubborn courage, a way of showing the world how handsome he was by the vulnerability of imperfection. Now, she saw it could be a weapon, with that ugliness turned against her.

She told him about her dream, between handfuls of salty snacks and long pulls of barely-brewed tea. It didn't take long in the telling.

"Okay," Polly said.

"What do you think I should do about it?"

" _Do_ about it?"

"Like, should I prepare wards or wake up the spirits of the buildings or try to conjure some luck? Can we talk to your familiar, maybe work out some sort of… deal with the Goblin King through him? I don't know what to do about this, Polly. I need him to go away. I could use a little help."

"You're not asking for help. You're asking for the impossible," he said, smiling that derisive smile she found mildly aggravating when he turned it against ordinary people. Turned against her, it was one tic below enraging. "You're asking me to re-order time to remake a bargain with your familiar. If I had that power, o-my-Queen, I wouldn't be sitting here with you. I'd be King of our coven, and you'd be sitting at my feet after having given me my morning fellatio and a hot cooked breakfast."

"Dick," Sarah muttered.

"I suppose the breakfast could come first," Polly said, taking a drag.

"Is there?" Sarah asked, chewing on more Chex mix. "Is there a way to turn back time? Do you know anybody with that power?"

"Nobody has that power," Polly said dismissively.

"The Goblin King does," Sarah said, after what felt like a long, long pause.

Apollonaire Van Knecht turned his head again, to stare into her eyes. All of the air in her lungs seemed to vanish as he gave her the intensity of his gaze. "Then I'll confess something. I also had a dream last night, Sarah. A true dream. The Goblin King offered me a bargain."

"What did he offer?"

"He told me he could arrange things so that my parents might not be dead."

"Out of the goodness of his heart?" Sarah said, with a sinking feeling. The Goblin King had no heart. Goodness was not in his nature. "What did he want in return?" she asked in a voice that was nearly a whisper.

Polly took a last drag off of his cigarette and threw it out the window. "You."


	3. An Object Lesson in Gender Politics

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 3:**  
**James Brown: "It's a Man's World"**  
**Lorde: "Yellow Flicker Beat"**

* * *

Sarah twiddled her fingers, feeling the magic there collecting, ready to fly, ready to defend her if she needed it so. "And what did you say to him?"

"To _it_ , Sarah. Jareth isn't a him. He's an _it_. He's not human. He's not a person, he's a personality. The fact that you can forget about that is just one more reason I pledged myself to you in the first place. To keep you from falling into his clutches, against your own instincts."

"You think I'm that weak?" Sarah asked him angrily. "You think I'd give him anything he wanted if he just gave me a good lay?"

"I do. Look at the state of you!" Polly jumped down from the windowsill and advanced on her, angry. "Red-mouth, pricked-tit, pheromones calling everything even slightly male to come nose at your ass. All it took was one dream of him and you're halfway to spreading your legs! You're all weak. You pretend it's the men at the mercy of sex, but what about you? You damned _woman_!" He grabbed her by the flesh of her arms, as if he wanted to shake her. Instead, he caressed her, thumbs pointing into the soft places where her muscles overlapped. Ah, contact, ah flesh. His hands were still cold from outside, and Sarah couldn't tell the difference between anger and lust. She wanted to fight him. She wanted to throw him to the bed and pin him underneath her, yank his pajamas down and have him inside her. She wanted to show him what she thought of his ape posturing; make his spine arch in submission. He smelled of cigarettes and Pert and fresh clean sweat.

"We could always just screw and get it over with," Sarah said, teeth inches from his lips. "Scratch that itch. Jareth would hate it. He'd hurt you for it, probably hurt your parents if they're in his power. But I'm game if you are. What do you say, Polly?"

Polly let her go with a curse, turned his back to her. He pulled at his hair and made a sound of frustration.

"I'm sorry," he said. She could see his face in the mirror of the window. He looked miserable.

"You better bet you're sorry," Sarah replied, trembling with anger and disappointed lust. "Recognize the difference between a fight and foreplay, and don't start anything you're not prepared to finish. Now answer my question. What did you say to the Goblin King's offer?"

"Nothing," Polly said, jamming his hands in his pockets. "I said nothing. I woke myself up." He looked over his shoulder at her. "I really am. Sorry. It's… not my fault. For grabbing you like that. It's like you're a cloud of pure sex right now. I couldn't help myself."

"Polly? Turn around. Look at me."

When he had, when he looked at her, apologetically hangdog but with the residue of smugness against his mouth, she hit him twice on his face with an open fist, forehand and backhand.

"Good," Sarah said, she watched him struggle between his desire to retaliate and his fear of what she might do if he did. It was a powerful feeling to encounter this expression. It was a position that most women never found themselves in. It also made her feel like a piece of shit.

"You had something on your face. I needed to wipe it off," Sarah said calmly. "Never put your hands on me like that again. You don't have permission to take what you want just because you want it badly enough. The first slap was for your pathetic attempt to blame me for what you did. The second was to drive the lesson home. Am I clear?"

"Crystal," he said, rubbing his cheeks against the sting.

"I hate that word," Sarah said, as she went to her wardrobe and hunted for clean underwear. She undressed herself without looking at him, or as if unaware of his presence, letting the hem of her shirt catch her breasts and bounce them upward. The elastic waist of her sweatpants stretched firmly against her buttocks as she drew them downward, ever downward, bending from the hips so that he could see all he wanted to of the cleft of her night-haired sex. As a punishment, it was far more mutually gratifying than slapping him. And he'd learned his lesson; he didn't so much as audibly breathe as he watched her in her nakedness.

"You think I'm some sort of dummy," Sarah said, dressing herself with less salacious ceremony. Underwear, bra, jeans, long-sleeved cotton shirt, green wool sweater. It took more time to comb through her hair, long slow strokes of her hairbrush pulling through her black hair and raising nary a crackle of static. And earrings, too, posts pierced through round plump lobes. Polly's expression was carefully neutral, attentive. "Look at you, Apollonaire. You made a pact with me, three years ago, to obey and serve me. Somewhere in your head, you still believe I only won because of luck. You and Jareth have a lot in common. You both underestimate me in the exact same ways." She reached out her hand for his, and he took it, giving a sigh as their flesh touched again. "I'm good at these games. These games of desire and power. I'm better than you'll ever be."

"So sayeth the virgin," Polly huffed. "If you're right, and I'm not saying you are, Sarah, then why did you bother to ask for my help?"

"Because you had a right to know about the danger," Sarah said. "I'm responsible for your safety. And I was frightened, and you're the best person to ask for advice. You're really smart when you aren't being stupid. What you said three years ago, when I was talking about good and evil like the ninny I was? You told me that good and evil are immaterial. That what really mattered was power and powerlessness, winning and losing. I still don't think you're right about good and evil, but you're right about the second thing. I'm powerless to escape Jareth's game. I agreed to play. I agreed three years ago. What I need to do is figure out what the game is. What I need is the power to win. And you think outside the box. You and Nan both. So let's go get breakfast and we'll figure out what's to be done. Lay out the parameters. Eat some bacon. Trade some secrets. Why don't you call her while I get my shoes on? Or maybe she'll call us."

On cue, Sarah's phone rang.

"That'll be Nan," Sarah said grinning, looking for a matched pair of socks.

Polly cocked an eyebrow and gave Sarah a look of impressed respect as he answered the phone with a cheery, "Hello, Nan."

Sarah could hear Nan's voice but not make out her words. "Tell her we're going to have breakfast together at Old Husker and talk about her dream," Sarah said, and Polly obediently relayed her instructions. Then he hung up on their friend mid-word. Sarah shrugged on her winter coat.

"How'd you know she'd had a dream?" Polly asked.

"Because it stands to reason," Sarah said. "The Goblin King probably made her an offer, too. After all, we're a coven led by a woman who defied him. He's going to try to split us up. To do that, he has to tempt us. And if he's true to form, he won't tempt us with nothing. If I can win this game, it's just possible that you can save your parents, that Nan can get whatever it is he's promised her, and that I can come out of this without being suborned to the Goblin King for all eternity."

"You know I don't believe in happy endings," Polly said dubiously, opening the door for her.

"I still do," Sarah said cheerfully, as they tromped down the ancient and rickety stairwell to the sidewalks below. It had begun to snow. The snowflakes gave her shivering cold kisses as they died against her lips and eyelids. "I believe in happy endings." She laughed and twirled around in the snowy morning, making swirling patterns in the untouched snow under her feet. When she slipped, Polly was there to catch her before she fell. And she didn't chastise him for that. There was a difference in a touch that helped and a touch that stole. Wise men knew the difference. Jareth was neither a man nor wise, but she anticipated his touch, nonetheless.


	4. The Heart-Shaped Box

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 4:**  
**My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult: "Daisy Chain 4 Satan"**  
**Swans: "Love Will Tear Us Apart"**

 

* * *

_A/N: With all respect and courtesy to American Horror Story: Coven, Cotton Mather and the Malleus Maleficarum for the term "Seven Wonders" as used in this chapter._

* * *

While there were two cafeterias at Triptoleme University called "Husker Hall," in reference to the college mascot (some moldy old Classical demigod who rode in a winged chariot and perpetually brandished a handful of cut wheat) it was generally agreed that Old Husker was the superior of the two for eating. This might have had something to do with the fact that Old Husker was the private cafeteria for faculty, administration, and invited companions and so the nosh was of slightly higher quality, or it might have had something to do with the fact that Old Husker was housed not in the tiled and fluorescent conglomerate that was the student union, but rather in one of the original old buildings of the university, with polished rafters and pointed pseudo-medieval windows and faux-gas chandeliers. Aesthetics were a sauce to appetite, and Old Husker was open to the students for brunch on weekends. Or at least, that was what the staff believed, after Polly had prompted them. So it was to Old Husker they went, giving the traditional nod to the university's namesake effigy as they passed on their way.

Nan was already waiting for them, her plate steaming with waffles and various smoked and sliced animal meats and her leather jacket slung over the back of her chair. Polly and Sarah dithered intensely over the various breakfast items on offer, and came to her with their trays similarly laden. Other than the staff and some ancient professor Sarah recognized from the Anthropology department, they had the place completely to themselves.

Nan kept her sunglasses on and her face averted from the delicious food that she apparently didn't want now. She had an entire carafe of coffee—another benefit that the professors' eatery had that the regular cafeteria didn't—and was pouring herself another cup as Sarah and Polly sat down. When Polly reached for the carafe, Nan practically snarled at him and drew it closer to herself.

"Rough night, babe?" Polly asked with habitual cruel accuracy. Nan's only reply was to flip him the bird. "You should eat that breakfast instead of staring at it, you know. You're too skinny. No curves to you. I was saying just the other day that when God cut off your penis, he ruined a perfectly good boy."

"And when God put teeth in your mouth, he ruined a perfectly good asshole," Nan said in a voice that had seen too much smoking, drinking, and general run-around the night before. "Let this coffee work before you say one more thing to me, Pollyanna. It was one fuck of a Friday night."

"Slept in your clothes again, huh?" Polly said.

"I didn't. Sleep." Nan said, and began eviscerating a waffle.

Sarah and Apollonaire exchanged significant glances.

Nan Bullen was two years Sarah's senior. Her red-golden hair seemed to float under the ebullience of its own curls in a cheerful cloud around her head, like the puckish heroine of some romance novel. It was her only visible softness in a personality made of stabbing gestures. She liked drugs, nightclubs, and dangerous company. She did not like school. She treated it as an afterthought, skipping classes as she felt like it, and eschewing homework altogether. That she hadn't been summarily kicked out on her ass—or managed to graduate—was testament to her witch's voice. Her teachers, academic advisors, and deans had a tendency to see her presence at Triptoleme as desirable and normal, once Nan had had a private chat with them and told them what to think about her situation.

Today she was wearing loose blue pants, a fishnet shirt worn under a dangerously open Oxford, hectically smeared make-up around her eyes and mouth, and not much else. She looked ready to collapse under a strong breeze. She looked like herself. She gave Sarah a fading smile and pushed the coffee over to her.

"Thanks," Sarah said, and played mother to Polly. By mutual accord, they ate in silence before moving on to the business at hand.

Near the end of the meal, Nan pulled a wide-spread rose out of her tangle of hair and began to feed it morsels of jelly and creamer and waffle-crumbs from the tip of her finger. It was only if one looked closely at the rose that one saw it had a wee little mouth, two wee beady sap-green eyes, and wee greeny-brown arms and legs (but somehow, always one or two too many of these and always at the wrong angles). It was Prickpetal, Nan's familiar spirit, and as spirits of that type went, it was cute and helpful. In the intervening years since the familiars' rebellion against their coven, Nan had reached a careful détente with her family's magical tutor. It was a meager thing, but still potentially dangerous, being free. Sarah still felt uneasy around it.

Polly's feelings were far less ambiguous. "At the fucking table, Nan? You're feeding that thing at the fucking table?"

"He's gotta eat!" Nan whined, but after a tiny kiss, she nested the rose back into her hair. "You're such a freakin' racist, Polly."

"It's not racism if it's not a person," he said, the opening bid to an old argument.

"Enough," Sarah said, slapping her hand down on the table. They both looked at her with that deference and fear that Sarah had grown used to seeing. "Polly, quit dogging Nan about Prickpetal. She has it under control. Nan, if you always use that thing to boost your abilities, you're never going to get better on your own. And you wouldn't have to feed it so often. You know it grosses Polly out."

"Fine," Polly said, clearly still offended by the spirit's presence.

"Whatever," Nan agreed, the stubborn jut of her lips indicating no plan to cut down on her magical addiction of choice.

Polly was right, Nan spent far too much time taking Prickpetal's instruction, borrowing Prickpetal's abilities instead of developing her own resources. The problem was, while Polly was the most formidable witch in the room and probably New England, and while Sarah had the most unrealized potential, Nan wasn't naturally in their league and probably never would be. She flagged in the simple spells and magical exercises they practiced. She used her familiar the way that less endowed athletes used steroids. And Sarah wasn't sure that without it, she would ever find ways to develop her powers before she gave up on magic altogether.

At least as far back as the days of witch-hunting in medieval Germany, and set down for mundane eyes in the Malleus Maleficarum, witches categorized their powers into seven wonders: Movement, fruitfulness, withering, bewitchment, unbinding, the tempest, and the voice of command. At least according to Jareth at the time he was filling her in on her back history, the first six wonders all had their origins in the tutelage of familiar spirits. The Seventh Wonder, the voice of command, was the thing that had allowed the first witches to speak to the unseen, and to shape and call the familiar spirits into existence and reality. The Seventh Wonder was a coveted prize that all non-human entities wanted for themselves, but had never acquired.

Unlike the wild and feckless spirits like the one she'd banished from the English classroom, all the familiar spirits had a core of mortality, a nucleus of reality into which they'd first been called. Prickpetal, the tutelary spirit of the Bullen family, had first been invoked from a pot-rose watered by a courtesan's tears. As far as familiar spirits went, Prickpetal was still an infant, only a few centuries old. Bootis, the Vaan Knecht family demon, had been embodied in a poppet made out of a stillborn son's arm bones sometime in the eighth century B.C. And Jareth… he had described his origins to Sarah when she first took possession of him three years ago, and they had been similar but much older, almost to the dawn of civilization in Europe, and much more violent. All familiar spirits could take any form they wanted, but the ones with their origins in sorrow and love and need and human remains were far more powerful, more difficult to control, and more dangerous.

Every familiar spirit had untold power to work six wonders in the mortal world according to their ability, and to teach these wonders to the witches according to her needs. Their nucleic cores, over the centuries of the demon's tenure, were sometimes lost and destroyed and the spirit's presence in the world went with them. But more often, an element of that core was transferred or embedded in a ring, a jewel, a locket, and ownership of the spirit passed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter, forming a never-ending servitude. Jareth's essence was embedded in at least two amulets Sarah knew about—she didn't fool herself into thinking there might be more somewhere—infant's fat mixed with ashes, making a little manikin, had been forged into the metal of the pendant he perpetually wore. A slave's collar. The power to command him had gone into a bronze ring, forged at the same time. Sarah's mother had done that, centuries ago. She had given the ring to Sarah. And Sarah had given the ring back to Jareth.

And there was a reason why a familiar as old and practiced as Jareth was dangerous to witches. The most potent spirits could impregnate mortal women, and bring about that most fearsome creature: a half-breed witch's child, one who could control the spirits of men and animals and ether via the mortal inheritance of the Seventh Wonder—one who might overturn mortal reality and crush the normal order of the world, having no innate allegiance to it. Modern Christians liked to call this being "Antichrist." Sarah didn't care for the term, finding it inaccurate, but it arguably came down to the same thing: a child who could bring about an apocalyptic end to the world, in fire and blood.

But for that kind of child to be born, a witch would have to do more than engage in coitus with her familiar spirit. She would have to allow herself to become fertile. She would have to tend every stage of the pregnancy with care and attention, helping something grow that should not and could not be born on its own. It was considered a disgrace, a shameful weakness, to love a familiar spirit enough to give it a child, but it had happened here and there over the past few thousand years, to no noticeably bad ends. One of Polly's first accusations against Sarah had been that she had been fathered by a demon—by Jareth, in fact. This hadn't been true, but it had been close to the mark. Jareth had told her, quite clearly and directly, that what he wanted from her was a marriage, deeper and more personal than the usual master-slave relationship. He wanted her to come and live with him, in his kingdom, where he had mastery and rule over the normal working of the world. The labyrinth: a kingdom somewhere between Hell and Fairy where he wouldn't need more than her tertiary consent to pregnancy and childbirth. He wanted to make a child in his own image. He wanted to overturn the world and its gods in the same way he'd overturned her mother's coven.

This was precisely Polly's fear: that Sarah would give birth to the wrecking-ball that was a half-demon child. And he had reason to be afraid. Jareth, the most dangerous familiar spirit, had far more freedom than any familiar spirit ought to have. Sarah had freed him.

Polly was right; she could be colossally stupid. But at the time, and even now, it had seemed like the right thing to do. She couldn't bring herself to regret that decision. Nothing that understood the misery of slavery should be made a slave, even if they were as dangerous as Jareth. He had been called into the world hundreds of thousands of years ago. He had not asked to be called. He had asked for nothing, not even from Sarah, but to be loved.

The danger was, she did.

Sarah tried to refill her coffee cup but the carafe was empty. Nan and Polly watched her every move; she'd been brooding in silence while they were desperate to have her speak. She stretched her fingertips out on the table. Her two witches also reached out and they made contact through their fingertips, against the smooth wood. Sarah felt the hum of their connection move through them like a palpable current.

"Here are the witches, and here is the circle we've made," Sarah said, using the traditional words. "Let us share our knowledge."

"I will," Polly answered promptly.

"I will," Nan said a bit uneasily.

"I want us to talk about our dreams. I'll go first," Sarah said in a low voice. "The Goblin King spoke to me in the dark, telling me we'd made a bargain; him to be fed, and me to be warm. He reminded me that I needed his warmth, just as he needed me to feed him. He asked if I'd let him warm me, and I answered yes."

"Here is my dream," Polly said, equally quiet. His voice shook. "The Goblin King sat high above me on his throne, and tossed my father's amulet down at my feet. He told me it was a silly token, nothing at all to him, but that I could use it to control Bootis, just as my father did. But he told me that if I valued my father's life and my mother's lives as much as I coveted their prestige, then he could restore them to me. All I had to do was deliver Sarah into his power. I didn't answer him. I woke up. And when I did, my father's amulet was in my hand."

"Jesus," Nan said with distaste. "Why are you slumming it with us if you've got that?"

"Hush," Sarah said. "Nan, what did you dream?"

Nan looked uncomfortable. "It wasn't a dream, really. More of a waking dream. I was dancing and I was rolling E, and I turned my eyes up at the lights, and Prickpetal began singing. And then I saw him. You know who I mean."

"The Goblin King," Polly said. "Great. What did he offer you, a pretty dress and a ring?"

"He said," Nan continued, with a glare in Polly's direction, "He said that if Sarah wouldn't take him, he'd find another witch. He..." Nan stared down at the table. "He took me in his arms and smiled at me and danced with me, and I forgot all about the time."

Sarah blushed, in empathy and in jealous anger.

"I said no!" Nan said defensively, and now she also blushed so red that her face outshone her hair. "I told him to forget it. And he just laughed and said I shouldn't have thought the offer was for me. He said I was rubbish at magic and maybe he'd come for me someday when he had nothing better to do." There was a wet plop from the rim of her sunglasses; Nan's tears had collected there. "As the ecstasy faded, so did he. He _laughed_. He humiliated me. "

"Nan, it was cruel of him to do that," Sarah said. "Anyway, it's not true."

"Yes it _is_ ," Nan said furiously, breaking their circle to shove her hands up to smear at the dripping tar-pits of her eyes. From the tangle of her hair, Prickpetal began to keen its dismay in a note so high and faint it could be mistaken for a misaligned electrical circuit, or a dogwhistle. "I am shit at witchcraft."

Polly tossed a handful of napkins at Nan. "Clean yourself up and get yourself together, you giant baby," he said coldly. "You're not rubbish."

Sarah gave Polly a glare. "Try that again."

"I mean," and Polly stood, reached over and took Nan's hand in his, an expression of kindness on his ruined face that made him look superlatively stupid, because he wasn't practiced at it, "What I mean is you're really good at growth and withering. It's just that Sarah and I aren't as interested, so we haven't done as much with the second and third wonders. A bit mean of us, to leave you in the cold with what you've got. But you're not rubbish. Your voice of command is getting better every day."

"You're just saying that to be nice," Nan said, still sniveling, but Polly dabbed at her face with the paper napkins. In her secret heart, for a moment, Sarah felt she hated her. She'd had Jareth's arms around her, she'd had Jareth's attention, and now she had Polly's. It wasn't fair.

"Dry up, Nan," Polly said affectionately. "When have you ever known me to say something just to be nice?"

Nan burbled an inadvertent laugh. "Thanks. But it's true, what he said. I have proof. He gave me something. He said if I was worthy, I'd be able to open it. If not, I was to give it to you." She fiddled with her jacket and drew out a prosaic heart-shaped box of the kind that traditionally contained Valentine's Day chocolates. It was a pink box, tied thriceover with a red, red ribbon in a complicated and many-looped knot. As the box landed on the table between the three of them, it made a distinct thump, as if something heavier than confectionary were inside.

"I tried," Nan said, not looking at Sarah. "That's what I was doing when I got home. Trying to untie that knot. But he was right about me. I tried for hours. I couldn't get it open. Then I called you."

"It wasn't meant for you," Sarah said with quiet fierceness. "How dare you, Nan? How dare you?"

"I vote we burn it," Polly said, eyeing the box with distaste. "Whatever it is, it means no good for us."

"Second!" Nan added.

"This isn't a _democracy_. We're not voting," Sarah said. "And it's not a socialist paradise. Don't take what's mine, Nan. Not ever again. Or I'll hurt you."

"Calm down, Sarah," Polly said uneasily.

"I'm calm enough. Don't tell me what to feel," Sarah said, drawing the box into her shadow. She pressed her hand down over it. She could feel something inside, some movement, something like life. It could be coming from the box itself, which despite all appearances was a masterwork in magic. As far as touch could tell her, the ribbon could not be cut, nor the paper torn. She took the edge of the ribbon between her thumb and finger, and gave a slow pull. Like a thorn drawn cleanly from flesh, the ribbon moved. The first pass of the knot undid itself as eagerly as a groom undressing himself on his wedding-night.

_Unbind, unbind, unbind_ , Sarah thought, using her gifts to facilitate the process. But the knot needed little prompting; at her touch another knot-loop arched itself open, so pliant and willing that there weren't any marks of torsion on its silky surface.

"I think you should stop," Nan said quietly. "Whatever it is, he's doing it to hurt you."

"Shut up, you. That didn't bother you when _you_ were trying to open it," Sarah said, brow furrowing as she worked the third pass. She had a memory then, as the ribbon danced under her desire, snake to snake-charmer, of doing just such an unbinding, of unwinding the red, the blood, of her ruined dress into skeins of red ribbons, into which she'd ensnared Jareth. In the last moment when she might have stopped, the ribbon lay uncoiled in a spiral around the heart-shaped box, and there was nothing to be done now but open it.

All three of them leaned forward, fascinated and fearful, as Sarah lifted the lid of the box and set it aside. And just as quickly, Nan and Polly fell back, as if what was contained therein was the force of an ill wind.

Nestled between chocolate bonbons in their black paper wrappers, fit perfectly inside the heart-shaped space it echoed, was the Goblin King's pendant, the core of his being.

She picked it up. It fit so smoothly and so rightly into the palm of her hand. She felt the life of him beating there, beating like a heart.

"So," Sarah said. "This is the demon's valentine."


	5. Invocation

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 5:**   
**New Order: "Bizarre Love Triangle"**   
**Nirvana: "Heart-Shaped Box"**

* * *

It was then that the vision hit Sarah, so absolutely overwhelming that it gave her soul whiplash. It began in her hand, the feeling of the weight of the pendant there, and then she saw that it wasn't the pendant; it was a little casket made of wood and sealed with lead that she held under her hand. What was it? Who was she? She was someone else.

She smelled scented smoke and felt the prickle of a fur spread under her kneeling shins. A leather tent stretched over her head, painted with one continuous design of spirals and chevrons that her eyes traced over and over, always leading back to their source or endpoint, a naked man painted in stark white opposite her. Enclosed on four sides, the tent's smoke-hole was open at the top, to the night, to the stars, to the scattered flakes of snow that penetrated within and landed icy-sweet on her naked flesh, melted into the sweat that beaded up against her breasts and trickled down her spine. Singing out to the moonless night, the clay cup of fire between her spread and fire-pricked knees was the only beacon. To him. To him.

Her mother had promised her to him; all she need offer was herself. He was generous, he was good, her mother had told her, about this god who belonged to women, this god who was only worshipped by women who belonged to no man. All she need do was give all he asked, her mother had told her, and he would grant all that she wanted.

Her mother was frightened for her. Her mother sorrowed at giving him away, even to her own daughter. But her mother had also given this gift to her in its proper time. She had taught her all the arts she needed, and taught her with love. She would give her no task or tool she couldn't accomplish, couldn't use. Her mother had allowed the cycle to continue, accepted the time of endings even as she hoped for a new beginning.

She stroked her tingling flesh with a fan made of white and gold owl's feathers, the animal sacred to him. These feathers were so soft that being kissed by them was like being kissed by air. She felt the desire building within her, a force as powerful as an arrow on the string. The tension built and built within her body and the space of the tent. And she called him. Stretched out, open-thighed, she used the fan to waft the scent of the incense and her own untutored desire out into the night, calling him. Calling him to her. Her love would invoke him there.

"Chyreth," she whispered. She was not afraid.

He fell to earth as softly and imperceptibly as starlight, and as he poured through the orifice of the tent left open for him. His body was bright, smoky, pale as the sun-hidden skin of her underarms, and he was kneeling there opposite her, as naked, as ardent as she. His eyes never left hers.

He cupped one hand over the crude oil-lamp, and she thought he would extinguish it. Instead, he lifted the flame into his hand, the oil pouring through his fingers like blood so that only the fire remained. And then he was the lamp, and the flame he contained lit the space between them in red, and blue, and dim white sparks that fell away from his body.

"Beloved," he murmured to her. "You have called me, and I have come. What would you have of me?"

Sarah felt something stutter inside her mind. She understood the meaning of his words, but the language wasn't one she knew. She felt herself-as-the-woman answer, felt how afraid she was to give the right answer to this creature's question, felt the tension in him build like the pillar of fire over his hand, knowing the wrong answer would give him leave to destroy her.

"I would have all," she said in the language Sarah didn't know. "All that's yours to grant, and all that's mine to give."

He laughed. It was a quiet laugh, solemn and pleased. "Yes," he said. "I will be yours, and you will be mine, beautiful girl."

* * *

Sarah closed her eyes, and the vision closed with them. When she opened them, she saw the pendant again. She put it back in its box and closed the box and lay her hand over the top of the box.

"I think I know what our dreams mean," Sarah said. "Or at least, what they imply. Three years ago, Jareth proposed a game. As long as I could refrain from calling on him, he would make do with the offerings I'd already made. There were some items in the fine print, of course. If I made a wish, for example, he would have to expend some of his magic to grant that wish, and bring the reunion time closer. And now when none of us called him, he's appeared to each of us. And he gave me this." She stroked her hand over the box. "He's acknowledging that he's lost. He wants me. He's submitted himself to me. He'll die without me, or have to seek out another witch. I've won our game. And… I want him back. I want Jareth. I need my demon. It's been very lonely for me without him. Like a piece of me is missing."

"You mean you want him in your bed," Polly grimaced. "You're sex-crazed."

"So what if I am?" Sarah countered. "It's not like you're not. I don't interfere with your sluttitude, Polly. I don't tell you where and how to get it. Don't tell me what to do with him. This is what I want. _He_ is what I want. I've been wanting him for a long time. And I mean to have him."

"So you're going to fuck him?"

"Yes," Sarah said, with a firmness of tone that invited no more discussion. "I am going to have him, for sex and for power and for everything else that I decide I need from him. And if you know what's good for you, you won't try to stop me."

"We should," Nan said.

"What would you do if I took Prickpetal away from you?" Sarah hissed at her. "You have your familiar. I deserve mine."

"Sex-crazed," Polly muttered to Nan. "I promised to protect you, Sarah. We both did. Letting you bed down with that thing feels like betraying you."

"Both of you could probably find a way to stop me if you worked together," Sarah agreed. "But you shouldn't. Your dream was a message. Like the laws of robotics, giving me into his power is the same thing as failing to stop me from giving myself to him. I'm asking you to let me do this. If you do, I will make damn sure that the Goblin King makes good on his offer. Your parents. Alive. If you really want that."

"What if he goes back on the deal?" Apollonaire asked, clearly shaken by the implications. "What if he lied?"

"I've never known Jareth to lie," Sarah said, picking up the box. "But if he's lied, or if there are additional terms or conditions, I will hurt him. Nobody messes with my coven and gets away with it."

"Don't I get anything?" Nan asked, petulantly. "What's in it for me, not stopping you? I don't want you to do this. It's the Demonic Tutor story. Every thirteenth pupil belongs to the devil. Every thirteenth witch belongs to the Goblin King."

"You're welcome to stop me if you _can_ ," Sarah said, hugging the box to her chest as she slid on her coat. "But I'll fight you, Nan. And I don't think you'll do too well without Polly backing you up. And he's not going to back you up. Are you, Apollonaire Vaan Knecht?"

She saw that they were holding hands again, a duo connection, sealed off against her, of one mind and she utterly both beyond them. "Don't worry, Nan" Sarah said cruelly. "If Jareth destroys me, he's sure to get to you eventually, once he's slummed his way down every witch in the lower forty-eight. Let me go and maybe you'll get a chance to dance with him again."

Sarah tossed her head and left the dining hall, wishing it didn't hurt so badly, wishing there was a way to keep their friendship and have what she needed. She wished they might have called her back, said the right words that would convince her that what she was doing was wrong, wished she could have found the right words to convince them that what she wanted was right. But it was no use wishing. Wishes were for children.

* * *

The storm had worsened over breakfast; the wind practically chased her into her narrow sloped-ceiling room and darkened the morning light once she was there. Sarah kept the lights off, one-handed lit a scented candle, fumbled with her coat and shoes, always keeping the heart-shaped box pressed against her heart.

She realized she was crying, just a little, just a few tears spent in her rage and her furious need.

She tried to discern what was necessary for the ritual from her vision. A maze; there was the same Escher print of the endless stairway and corridor that had hung in her bedroom at home, summoning up the pattern of the labyrinth. A fire; there was the candle. A door; she cracked the window, its own ancient joints keeping it just ajar against the wind. It quickly became much colder in her already cold room. Given the temperature, she didn't think nudity was absolutely essential, and her own desire was palpable in the air. He would pick up the scent soon enough.

And the pendant, the amulet. She sat down on her bed and placed her hand over the box.

"Jareth," Sarah called out, softly, into the dark. "Jareth. Jareth."

Nothing.

The tears pooled in her eyes. She flicked open the lid of the heart-shaped box, lifted the salt-water drops away with her fingertips, and smeared them across the oily-smooth surface of his pendant.

"Jareth," she whispered, putting the power of command into her voice. "Come to me. I want you."

Nothing.

"Jareth, I wish you would come to me right now," she pleaded.

Ah, a wish. Words tied to a thread cast forth from her heart. That was when he came, the shadow of an owl winging through the darkness, flowing through the window like a tide of water. And he was there, magnificent, impossibly composed, glitter sloughing away from his white leather coat, his tight faded bluejeans, an upthrust collar of branches in bud and ice framing his proud neck and high head. Sarah let out a shuddering sigh as she looked at him, feeling the anticipation of the release of pleasure traced over every line of his body.

"Lady," he said, and his face was cold and his voice was cold. "You have summoned me, and I have come. What would you have of me?"

Sarah gasped, and her breath came out in puffs of white. "Jareth?" she said, not certain that this was he. He was so distant, and imperious. It was as if he had no heart at all, and no warmth for her. "Aren't you happy to see me?" Sarah asked, feeling the tears coming again. "Not even a smile and a hello, after all this time?"

"You called; I came," he said, as if she were some species of insect. "Give me your commandment and I will obey. Anything else is my own, and not yours. You kept me waiting far too long." His face was a mask of disdain; like a mask, it betrayed nothing of any truer inner feeling.

"But that's over now," she said, trying to reason with him.

"Your moods are too uncertain for me to depend on, generous or cruel. I see Nan delivered my heart to you. You can make offerings to me though it. To keep me alive. To keep me from starving to death. There will be no need for us to speak, unless you choose to give me a command. Again, as _you_ have chosen. As _you_ wanted."

"You're angry with me," Sarah said. "I kept you waiting until I won. Are you angry about that? I'm willing to be so nice to you now." She stood, trembling, and wrapped her arms around his neck, hung there like his amulet. But he remained cold, and unmoved. He was like a block of ice dressed in fashionable clothes. "I want you. Don't you want me? Don't you want to make love to me?" Her voice had gone high-pitched, little-girlish, and she felt as she had when, as a little girl, she was due to admit some fault that would lead to punishment.

Gently, indifferently, he unlocked her from his neck, deflected her from the cold comfort of his breast. "I don't want to 'make love,' as if it's a thing that can be made," he said, and she felt a bit better; his sneering was at least a form of interest. "If my Lady wants me to penetrate her, I will oblige. But as you can see, I'm cold. My heart isn't in it. It wouldn't be pleasurable for either one of us."

This wasn't the way the story was supposed to go; after some initial grumpiness and sore-loser quips, he was meant to forgive her everything. He was supposed to love her, show her the carnal pleasures she'd refrained from taking for want of him and only him, granting her virginity to him. She had been prepared to risk the temptation of giving him everything. But she could see by the glare of his black eye and his blue-frost eye that he was prepared to forgive her exactly nothing. "You don't want me?" she almost cried.

"No," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on her. "I don't want you, Sarah."

"Why not?" she demanded.

"Because I find you obvious, and ugly, and vulgar," he said, as if discussing the weather. "Now if there is no request of yours I can grant, allow me to leave." His voice took on a sharper edge as he turned her back to her, stepping up on the window-seat, preparing to leave. "Be sure to summon me next time with blood or fire, not tears. Your tears are cheap."

Her jaw dropped, and she was momentarily warmed by fury. Her eyes swam with it, turning her vision pink. She thought to say something cutting and rude to him, something taken from Polly's box of insults, but she couldn't speak. Everything had gone wrong. Everything was terrible. The world had fallen down. And he was going to leave her, and he would never love her again, not ever. Not ever.

"Jareth," Sarah said, and he paused, feathers sprouting and withdrawing from the shoulders of his coat like anemones grasping at the flow of the current. She felt her sorrow and her writhing tethered-down sexuality making war with her pride. In one more moment, he would fly away, and nothing between them would ever be right again. She couldn't let that happen.

"Jareth," Sarah said. "I wish—"


	6. Negotiations

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 6:**  
The Murmurs: "I'm a Mess"  
Mr. Mister: "Broken Wings"

* * *

He paused, one boot upon the windowsill, still not looking at her. "You wish _what_ , Sarah?"

The only thing in her head to wish for was that he loved her, absolutely and completely. He would grant that wish. He wouldn't be able not to. That was one thing that made demons very different from people. The bodies of people were vulnerable, but their spirits were resilient. The opposite was true for demons. She could not, for instance, compel a human man to love her with a simple sentence. But she could command Jareth to do so, and he would. Utterly. Completely. Without reservation, from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes, he would live to love her.

Sarah knew her mother had commanded Jareth to love her once, back at the beginning of their relationship. It had taken centuries, but that command had eventually showed the other side of the coin; he had come to hate Linda enough to desire her death.

Sarah had never commanded Jareth to feel anything. The feelings he'd had for her had seemed to be enough to deal with at the time. But she had asked him if he trusted her. And he had answered yes. His trust had allowed her to prevent her mother's death. It had also allowed her to banish him from her life for three years. He had trusted her; he had starved.

"I wish I could earn your trust back," Sarah said quietly. "Jareth, I'm sorry I squandered it."

He sighed deeply.

"I don't want you to hate me," Sarah said. "But if you do, I won't try to change that. I won't wish that you didn't. I'll just let you see how badly it hurts me. Please, look at me."

His eyes cut through the tangle of branches at her. Oh, so cold. Still so cold.

"You can go now," Sarah said. "Go, or stay. Whatever you want."

"I don't," he said. "I don't hate you." Slowly, he withdrew his boot from the lintel, and stepped down from the ledge. "I'd forgotten, Sarah, that you somehow can always say the right words when time has almost run out." He shook his head in disgust, and particles of ice detached from his hair and scattered across his shoulders. "And I've always liked it when you say 'please.'" The icy surface of his face was cracked in a small smile which quickly disappeared. He folded his arms over his chest, leather squealing as it rubbed against itself.

Sarah caught a scent in the air that the fierce draft of the cracked-open window couldn't dispel. Part of it was the sandalwood candle, but most of it was him. Leather. Cloves. Sex. The acid frailty of peach-leaves. The scent of the ground as the first drops of rain watered it.

"You realize, of course, that your summoning was deeply insulting."

"We're going to have a conversation?" Sarah asked, surprised. "Like people do?"

" _I_ am a person," he said, with another dour and icy look. "Or have you forgotten?"

"I've never forgotten that," Sarah said defensively. "Come. Sit. Be my guest. Shall I take your coat?"

"Take it where?" he inquired mildly, and she realized he was making a joke. "No, I'll keep my clothing on. All of it. As you may have noticed, it's cold in here."

"I could close the window," she suggested lamely, but he interrupted her with a sharp shake of his head, sitting down on the window-seat, one knee crossed atop the other. "I'd prefer the door remain open so I might leave when I want to."

"Of course," she said. "Can I get you anything to eat or drink?"

"Sarah. In this room, what you currently have to offer me is some rather vile instant tea, and the picked-over remains of a snack mix. The contents of your tiny refrigerator contain two different types of soft drinks, both flat, three-quarters of a gallon of rather not the best vodka, and two pieces of pizza curling up on themselves like wet cardboard. I'll refrain."

"Because it's insulting?" Sarah asked. She sat down on her bed and wrapped herself in her comforter. The rolled-up bag of Chex discards unrolled itself and spilled itself into her bed. Sarah grimaced. She'd clean up that mess later. Right now, there was another mess that needed her attention. "I don't see how I've insulted you."

His eyes flickered over the entirety of the room with mild contempt. It was as if he were rolling his eyes at all of it, everything in it, and at her.

"Please tell me what I've done that's so insulting!" Sarah asked.

"Really, Sarah. I did everything but summon myself for you, and this is all you could manage. You have the bones of it, which is disgraceful enough. The maze, the open door, the flame, my heart. But look at you. Clothed, when you should be naked."

"It's cold in here," Sarah objected. "Like you said."

"I have had women who willingly lay down on bare ice for me. But you, you snapped your fingers as if you were ordering a slave to warm your furs. I'm not your slave, Sarah. And there is the matter of your breakfast. Thusnelda, from your vision, she refrained from eating and drinking anything more than one cup of wine and two unleavened biscuits a day for a month before summoning me. Her body was a thrumming bell, attenuated through fasting. _Your_ breath smells of pig-meat and luxury. Worse, you didn't even think to carry anything away for me. What did you expect me to eat, the shards of bacon from between your teeth? You didn't even brush." Blue sparks of ice-fire caught and shivered in his coat-collar. "And speaking of hygiene, when was the last time you bothered to bathe? Even your bed is filthy, the bed you thought to take me in. _Me_. It speaks of your carelessness, your contempt for me. You wanted me to fuck your unwashed body in this filthy room. You wanted to make very sure I understood my place in your life. You wanted me to know how badly I'd lost. Insulting. You wanted me humbled. Admit it." His eyes blazed with cold rage.

"I'm sorry," she said, knowing an apology was inadequate, and knowing more painfully how right he was. She hadn't allowed herself to think of this scenario as revenge, but it was. Not entirely, but enough to count. "I suppose that's true."

"Precisely," he said, lowering his leg to the floor and standing up. "It's the sort of thing your mother would have done, when I was her slave. My hopes for you… were so much higher. But then, you are your mother's daughter. Don't snivel," he said exasperatedly, as she felt the tears coming up in her eyes again. "Don't _cry_. You're not Linda. This situation isn't beyond repair. You've made a wish, and I'm inclined to grant it. You can still earn back what you wasted."

"Because you're obliged," Sarah said sadly.

"No. Because despite all you've done wrong, you've done a few things very right."

"What, though? I don't know anything, Jareth. I'm a mess. There's nobody to teach me about you but you. Tell me what I did right."

He stepped toward her, enfolded her in the gauze of his presence. "You called at the wrong hour, daytime and not night, but you called me as quickly as you could once you'd decided to do so. And you called me alone, even though you might have had great power over me if you'd summoned your coven. You made that sacrifice for my sake. All of these right things are balm, but they don't balance the scales. There is only one right thing you've done that makes me want to try to trust you again, one thing that makes me need you, want to love you, want to kiss you and woo you and have you."

"What is it?"

He traced his gloved fingers over her eyebrows, cupped his hand over the top of her head. "When you think of love and pleasure, you have only ever thought of me. You have made your sexuality a temple, pristine, where only I am worshipped. That is perhaps the deepest compliment I've ever been paid. You're one of the few women who have ever offered me that." His hands were heavy, and gentle.

"There's that, then. You don't know what it's cost me." She quivered to his touch.

"I _do_ know," he breathed. He stroked her cheeks with his glove, one after the other, forehand and backhand, a slap in slow-motion. "You told that young jackanapes this, and this, I believe, for propositioning you as badly as you have me. Then you made some girlish boasts about winning games of sex and power. Your hunger gave you an edge then. I wonder how well you'll play if I satiate that hunger now. I always let you win before. What will it be like to see you lose? One wonders." He took back his hand, his touch, and it felt like dying.

"So, you'll come back to me?" Sarah asked.

"I might," he said, returning her smile. "It's for me to consent, isn't it? You may try summoning me again, Sarah. Tonight, if you like, or in any dark of the night, and get it right. Ask with desire. Put your best effort into it. It will be your second chance. I'll not give you a third."

Taking one rapid step backward, and then a third, he retreated from her. He became an owl in the fourth step, and then the owl was gone. All that was left to mark his presence was a drift of glitter on the already none-too-clean floor, and a single white feather.


	7. Devotional

**Soundtrack for chapter 7:**   
**Arcana: "Dark Age of Reason"**   
**Depeche Mode: "Waiting for the Night"**

* * *

Sarah cleaned her room as if the devil were poking her with his pitchfork. She also cleaned as though she were Cinderella sans singing mice, with the fervent hope that if she worked hard enough, she might be allowed to go to the ball. Both analogies had the merit of truth.

She worked without magic, sensing it was worth more to do so; she worked in anger, inarticulate and unstrung curse-words huffing on her breath. She washed out a blue vase that had held half-a-dozen live roses a month before and used it to contain the glitter he'd left behind, sweeping it out from between the floorboards with the rather inadequate hand-broom and pouring it in with a funnel made of paper. Some of it stuck to her sweaty face and body, and her sweeping disturbed pristine dust-kitties the size of tribbles, which also stuck to her. The glitter had revealed some nasty sticky spots on the floor, but she would have to take care of that later. She stood as high as she could reach on the ends of her bedstead, her desk, and her wardrobe, and brought down all the grey cobwebs that nestled in the corners. She dusted everything else with a slightly damp washrag, even to the deepest corners of the bookcase. And then she cleaned out the fridge, removing the offending soda and old food, and scrubbing the inside with her cache of vinegar, which smelled as foul as her mood.

She had just gathered up her dirty bedclothes and two weeks' worth of dirty laundry into portable bundles and wondering if the washers downstairs would be free or if she ought to haul them off-campus to the laundromat, when her phone rang.

"Hello?" Sarah said impatiently.

It was Nan, who spoke without preamble. "Polly's left. He's gone to Portsmouth," she said with venom, as if New Hampshire were a species of Hell. In Sarah's opinion, it was. "He's gone to identify his parents."

"They're dead?" Sarah asked, shaken. She sat on a pile of dirty bedclothes with a bump.

"No. They're alive. At his house."

Sarah sighed in relief. "Why does he need to identify them, then?"

"They've been gone for three years, remember. The caretaker saw intruders, so she called the police. So the police are there waiting for Polly to make a positive I.D. But it's _them_ , Sarah. Polly wanted me to tell you, otherwise I'd have gone with him. I'm going over on the first train that'll take me."

"Okay," Sarah said. "But why didn't they just tell the police what they wanted them to believe? They're both witches. Why this rigamarole? Not that I blame Polly for wanting to see them."

"They can't talk."

"What do you mean, they can't talk?" Sarah felt a headache beginning where her brow furrowed. "Can't, or won't?"

"Does it really matter?" Nan asked. "Polly thinks they've been stripped of their magic. Like your mother was. And I have a pretty good idea of who he can thank for _that_ if it's true."

"My mother is lucky to be alive," Sarah said coldly. "They should be too."

Nan didn't answer. The silence hung between them on the line long enough to be uncomfortable.

"What?" Sarah asked, wishing Nan would make it quick. She'd said what Sarah needed to know; anything else was a waste of her time. She had a lot of work to do, and time, as Jareth was fond of saying, was short. She looked over at the box on the mantle of the plastered-up fireplace, wondering if it would be safe if left alone, or if she should tote it with her.

"You're unbelievable," Nan said.

"What have _I_ done?" Sarah said, outraged.

"Think about it, Sarah. If Polly's parents are alive, then what about my mum? What about my two sisters? What about all the other members of the coven that the Elf put in the box? Are they alive too? Have you considered them?" Nan's voice rose in an hysterical burble. "What about saving them?"

"None of us thought anyone survived until this morning. You didn't!"

"Because I thought Jareth was full of shit, that's why!" Nan screeched. "You have to let me talk to Jareth. You have to let me figure out if there's something he'll trade for them."

"You aren't talking to him," Sarah said, feeling the fires of jealousy burn inside her. "He's got me doing cartwheels just to have a conversation with him. I don't want to think about what he'd ask of you. You can't handle him. The answer is no."

"Polly said you'd be like this," Nan said sourly. "Well, I'm going. Maybe his parents can write a note or something, catch us up on what happened. I told him I was going to invite you to come, too, but he said you wouldn't. Just promise me one thing, Sarah. Promise you'll find out what you can from Jareth. Find out if he knows if they're still alive, at least. Magic or not, this is my fucking family. You and Jareth don't have the right to play these kinds of games with people's lives."

"I have every right," Sarah said. "It's my life and my soul I'm risking, just to talk to him. And he's risking his freedom to talk to me. But since it matters so much to you, I'll ask. I'll do everything I can. I promise. Was there anything else?"

Nan cursed her out. "There's something really wrong with you, Sarah. There's something _wrong_. It's like there's something evil inside you, and it's just getting stronger every time you speak his name. Just don't forget my family."

"I won't," Sarah said, tired of the conversation. "Have fun in Portsmouth. Tell Polly I said hello, and that you're both welcome for all that I've done for you today."

The receiver cracked loud enough to ring her ears as Nan slammed the phone down.

Sarah sighed. Slowly, she got to her feet. She might as well take the laundry to the laundromat; there were other things she'd need to purchase that could only be bought off-campus anyway. She looked over at the box on the mantle, and slipped it into her coat pocket. The phone rang again as she went out the door, laundry bundled on her back and her purse cutting into her shoulder. Sarah knew it was Nan, calling again probably to have the last word a second time. Well, she would save herself the aggravation. She let the phone ring and ring, and thought only of the weight of the world in her pocket.

* * *

Although she didn't want to, she thought about that conversation as she did her shopping and her laundry, tootling her little car around the city's laundromat, grocery store, department store and Goodwill in the increasingly low visibility.

_Is there something wrong with me?_ Sarah wondered, watching the sheets go round and round in the washer, as she saw herself handing over her slim cash reserves at one place after another, to purchase a new nightgown, a bouquet of fresh roses, fruit, cheese, chocolate. a bronze-plated ashtray on sale for 99 cents in a jumble with other decorative metallic bric-a-brac. _Should I just have taken what I wanted from him? Why am I wooing? I don't even know what the rules are anymore. Are we playing a new game? Am I going to lose, as he promised?_

_Is there something wrong with me?_ she asked herself, as she rolled up the sisal rug and took it into the late afternoon to shake out and beat clean, as she set it aside in the hall so that she might scrub the room on her hands and knees, with painstaking care and pain. When she wondered why she wasn't bothered, she looked to the heart-shaped box sitting on the mantle. It seemed to provide answers. Even enclosed, it drew her eye, made her feel reassured, made her desire Jareth's presence all the more. The phone rang periodically in the afternoon, urgently, until Sarah switched the ringer off.

"There _is_ something wrong with me," Sarah said out loud, mopping up the last of the dirty water with her next-to-last towel. "I'm bewitched."

_"A year and a day and a week, poison be love when you speak."_ That had been her mother's parting curse to her daughter. Well, a year and a day and a week had long gone by, without talking to Jareth. Had Linda's curse missed, or was it come to fruition? Were they going to destroy one another?

She wanted him so badly. She ached in the shower under the torrential downpour of the water, belly empty and angry, raging for food and for sex, her skin burning where she touched herself. From the tip of her head to the toes on her feet, she wanted him. There was no rationalizing it. It was primal. It was in the pitch of his voice, and the memory of how his skin had felt, and the taste of him in her mouth when he had kissed her. She wanted him. She would make him want her, too. Damn her mother. Damn the consequences.

On the sink, in view of the open shower stall, the amulet sat in its box and waited. And when she combed her hair with the sandalwood comb, and paired her nails, and perfumed her body under her arms and the cup of her thighs, she waited too. She waited for the night to come, and made her final preparations. There was too much hunger to wait for a better time.

Fire, he had said. Or blood, to summon him. Whatever curse might be working in her head or her heart or her sex, she still wasn't stupid enough to offer a demon her blood. The last time she had done so, Jareth had killed people. Innocent people. He had become a pillar of white fire that devoured conscience and consciousness. Whatever it was about him that made him humane got lost in an offering of blood. So she would use fire, and perhaps this time his heart would be warm towards her.

Opening the window, stretching her hands out to the dark of the night, she lit the bronze offering-bowl. It lit with a blue flame; the vodka might have been cheap, but it burned nicely. It burned hot under the hand that held it. She passed his heart through the flames three times, feeling the hair on her knuckles sizzle and char as she did, and then left it to burn there.

"Jareth," she called him, stroking the feather across her lips, down her throat. All was dark and still in her room but for the blue flames in the bronze ashtray. Desire, hunger, flung out on an open window to him. "Jareth, if it please you, come to me," she murmured. "I ask nothing more than your presence. Show me pity, and come."

And so it was, when he came to her call, that she was grateful.

"This will do," he said, putting his hands out to the bowl and taking it from her. "This will do quite well, Sarah." And though her hands were burned, she felt his touch as a more intense heat, one that soothed. His eyes became her world entire. "Now. I have come, and I will stay until this flame burns out. Shall we begin again?"

"Yes," she said. _Yes, oh yes. Yes._

"Good," he smiled at her, and she thought she might live and die for that smile. She remembered there were questions to ask him, important questions, but for now he was here, and as he lifted the bowl in one hand it became a lamp upon a stand, and the space around them, private and enclosed, was the stuff of glamour and vast potential.

"Sarah," he murmured, and the darkness washed over the world.


	8. Care and Feeding of Your Pet Demon

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 8:**   
**Rasputina: "Signs of the Zodiac"**   
**Toad the Wet Sprocket: "Pray Your Gods"  
**

* * *

"Sarah. You have called, and I have come. What would you have of me?" His smile was a lunular knife in the fire-glossed dark.

"Tonight?" she said, trying to still her breath. "I thought we might play a game, and talk."

"Nothing more than that?" he asked, amused.

"Food, if you'd like it."

"Food, games, gossip. And you in your night-clothes."

She was. The nightgown was new, white nylon so thin that the blush of her nipples and the shadow of her sex were just visible through it. The robe was slightly older, an antique green silk kimono her father had bought her in her childhood for her dress-up trunk. Now it fit as it ought, and the neckline plunged to her waist, inviting all, concealing essentials. "How delectable you look. I could peel you and eat you, even with your green rind."

"You'll find I'm not so green, if I ever invite you to take a bite," she countered, head swimming.

"You've invited me to a pajama party. How novel. I accept." He drew his hand down past his body, and his clothing transformed. Like her, to match her, his night-wear was decorous yet deliberately provocative. The pallor of his skin contrasted to the translucent black tunic he wore, with pants so loose they seemed a skirt. She could just make out the winking eye of one of his nipples above the shiny black silk of his tightly-belted dressing gown, which sadly hid everything else of his body from closer inspection. His flat sandals were studded with gold bullion, his only ornamentation other than a series of rings on both hands. Ah, she wanted him. "So," he said. "What game will we be playing? Risk? _Sorry_?"

"Sit and find out," she said, indicating the most comfortable chair in the room, a stuffed institutional monstrosity that had come with the room. She had reserved the desk-chair for herself, and shifted her footlocker to use as a makeshift table. "Pour yourself some hot chocolate if you like. The pot is just there. I'll get the rest." She dug inside the mini-fridge for the fruit and cheeseboard she'd prepared.

"Scrabble?" Jareth said incredulously, seeing the board laid out there. "You want to play _Scrabble_ with me?"

"An elaboration of it," Sarah said. "I had some different rules in mind. To keep things interesting." She placed the provisions down with a new bottle of the most expensive bourbon she could afford—a small bottle—and sat down carefully in her hard wooden chair. He looked relaxed and at ease, hands palm down on the solid armrests, and yet so out of place, magnificent, impossible. Even the food looked wilted in his presence, tawdry, everything unacceptable. She clenched her tightly-locked knees with her trembling hands. "It's wrong," she said. "It's still wrong. This room is still squalid. I don't know what I was thinking."

"Giving up so soon?" he asked. "And you made such a good first play. In lieu of bringing flowers, let me bring some stage dressing." He stretched out one hand, and the shadows seemed to retreat from it. And they were in a room that had the same perspective and dimensions of her shabby dorm room, but so much larger. The roses bloomed hot and red out of gilded vases, and the fireplace burned with a pinecone fire, and everything that was otherwise dull was coated in resinous blue shadows and the smell of silk, where it wasn't an occluded mirror that threw back their reflections in any direction she looked. "Better?" he asked.

"A bit," Sarah said, leaning back into her coaxing velvet chair. "But I still feel like I need a drink. I'm nervous."

"Just so you know, this isn't quite comfortable for me, either," Jareth admitted, lifting up the samovar of chocolate and pouring it into one of two matching porcelain cups. He broke the seal on the liquor-bottle easily, and added a tipple of each for them. "I can tell you're frightened. I am too; I'm only better at hiding it." He stirred her drink three times, and then his own, and handed her her cup. "To caution," he said, smiling.

Sarah would drink to that. "To caution." She touched her cup to his and drank hers off in one pull. The liquor was potent enough to make her body relax almost immediately, until little glances at the movement of his wrists, the curve of his mouth, set her heart to thrilling again.

"Do you remember—" he asked at the same moment she said, "Remember when—" and they both shared a nervous laugh. Jareth began peeling an apple in one long strip.

Sarah tried a smile. "You stole an entire thermos of hot chocolate for me, because you knew I was cold. It was laced with bourbon."

"And you gave all but one cupful of it to me to drink, because you thought I was hungry. Yes. I remember very well." The apple-skin made arcane patterns on the low narrow table between them. "I've never forgotten." He cored the naked apple and cut it into wedges. "So. Tell me what the rules are tonight. For Scrabble."

Sarah poured out another round of chocolate for them both. "I assume you know the ordinary rules. Tonight, I thought we'd play using magic. The drawing of the tiles is meant to be random, and there are only so many of every letter. But tonight, we can have whatever letters we like, seven at a time."

"Advantage mine," Jareth said, opening the rulebook and perusing it quickly. He peeked over it at Sarah. "I'm far better at this sort of magic than you are, as this pleasant venue can attest."

"Here's _my_ advantage," Sarah said, taking a slice of cheese. "The board is finite, and so are the number of tiles. And unless you've been playing with Sir Didymus regularly these past three years, I'm more practiced at this game than you are. And I go first."

"And the game ends when?"

"When there are no more words to have," Sarah murmured over the rim of her cup.

"Stakes?" Jareth asked, with a vulpine smile. "How do we tell who's won? I understand that there is some math involved in scoring this game."

"Forget math," Sarah said. "Forget the points. The rule is, we have to talk to each other on the subject of every word. No lies. Those are the stakes. And there is no loser. We both win, just by playing."

"Hmph," he said a bit dismissively. "I'm not sure what fun it is if I can't have you lose to me." He took up the paperback dictionary and flipped the pages. Words in ink sprang out between the spinning leaves like seed-pods.

"Chicken?" Sarah taunted.

"No. I'm willing to play. But I have an additional rule."

"Name it," Sarah said.

"Neither of us quits until the game is over."

"Agreed," Sarah said. "Hand me the bag. I'll go first."

She drew the tiles out, one by one, the letters coming easily and in the right order. She didn't even bother to line them up on her slate, but placed them down on the center star, starting with the first letter.

FRAUGHT

"Nothing between us is simple," Sarah said. "But I think we might be able to at least understand where we're coming from with a clean board. You said you were frightened. What frightens you about me?" She passed him the bag.

Jareth let out a long slow breath. "You're very direct, Sarah. I thought this was meant to be a conversation, not an interrogation."

"You'll get your chance on your turn. Talk to me. Tell me."

He shook the bag and drew out his own tiles. He fiddled with his slate, avoiding her eyes. He laid out a word. PATTERNS, vertically intersecting the R. "I'm afraid of your voice. That you'll forget that I'm at the mercy of your words, and you'll slip into the habit of just ordering me about."

"Have I yet?" she asked.

"Not yet," he said. "But power feeds on itself, and you are your mother's daughter. She too, the first few times she took a new body, had a honeymoon period where she preferred romancing me to outright commanding me. I suffered quite a bit of anguish over that, until I learned better. Eventually she stopped trying to woo what she had already won. You're right to be afraid of me, and what I might do to get revenge, if you ever start down that road." He looked up from the board and looked at her, still, still, a snake coiled to strike. "Your turn."

Sarah fiddled with the tiles. She crossed the second T of PATTERNS with ATTEMPT. "I do want your power. There are things you can teach me about magic that nobody else can. I want that terribly. But don't want to steal it. I want to compensate you."

"With sex," he said, and ran the tip of his tongue along his teeth as he looked at her. "It isn't payment if you're getting what you want twiceover," he said. "Though it's not a bad initial offer. I do desire you. Tell me, Sarah, what would you do with the things I taught you, if I agreed to teach you? Where would you begin?" He thumbed an apple-slice into his mouth.

"My Aunt Bub died," Sarah said. She felt cold, remembering the death, the funeral. "I tried to heal her, but she had two more strokes. She died drooling and incoherent in a hospital bed, and nothing I did helped."

"You should have called on me," Jareth said reproachfully, laying down POWER across PATTERNS. "I could have helped you save her, if she mattered that much to you. All you had to do was ask."

"Look at you, pretending her death is news," Sarah said, with honeyed malice. She played her word. "I know you watch me. You were watching then. You could have made the offer to help without my asking. But if I know you, Jareth, you weren't thinking about helping. You were thinking, the moment I called, that you'd levy a heavy price. Sore. Angry. Looking for revenge and me backed in a corner. I wasn't going to play. I'm as afraid to be in your debt as you are to be in my control." TACTIC crossed down from FRAUGHT.

He laid down UNREADY, parallel to TACTIC. "I might have surprised you," he murmured. "With my generosity, but you were unready for it. And now your Aunt Bub is food for worms."

Sarah sighed and ate a wedge of cheese, followed by a slice of fruit. She held out her cup. "More liquor please. I hate talking about this."

He refilled her cup and poured himself some more as well. He waited, just as she did. "Irene was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. It was a small tumor. In her uterus." Sarah took a large sup, and felt the alcohol burn as it went down her throat. "That's when I called Apollonaire. Nan, too. Together, we were able to work a spell. It shrank the tumor, but we couldn't kill it. Not completely. Now it's growing again. I can feel that this cancer wants to kill her. I'm not interested in letting that happen. This cancer has the stink of malficia about it, and I want whoever is responsible hammered down." She laid down FINITE vertically, with the word IN couched beside PATTERNS. "I won't insult you by asking if this is all your doing, although you've gotten my family members involved in your plots before. I think you know that there are some things I won't forgive you for."

"How fierce she is," Jareth said archly.

"If I thought you were responsible, our conversation this morning would have been very different. It would have begun with me fitting that slave-collar back around your neck and ended with me commanding you to destroy yourself." She leaned back in her chair, her robe sliding just slightly off her shoulder.

He gave her a sharp and dangerous look, but his eyes flickered to and away from the exposed curve of her upper breast, and then back to her eyes, her smile.

"That's the way, isn't it?" she crooned, running a hand through her hair. "You've lived a long, long time, but even you can have an ending. As can I, and everything else. Help me save Irene, and punish the ones responsible. Consider it the forfeit you pay for losing."

"Losing?" he said, and his smile was terrible, dark and knowing, and only in his eyes. "Sarah, when exactly was it that I conceded?"

"When you sent me your heart," she said, sitting upright. The triumph she'd felt, the secret supremacy, the false confidence of the alcohol completely burnt away as she saw it all reflected completely in his eyes.

"That," he said, and leaned so far over the board that she could taste his breath, "Wasn't the end of our game, Sarah." Tiles clicked against each other as he laid them out on the board. "It was only the end of the beginning."

Eight letters, horizontally.

DISCOUNT

"You've taken too many things for granted."


	9. Liberties

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 9:**   
**Enigma: "Sadeness Part I"**   
**B-Tribe: "Sensual Sensual"**

* * *

_Author's Note: I feel the need to deliver a warning on this chapter, for games of sexualized power. But in truth, that's the entirety of what this story is meant to be. Be aware. Enjoy._

* * *

"Don't hate yourself too much for being so naïve," Jareth practically purred. "I wanted you to think you'd won. You only show your hand when it's a winning one. Now I can see it. Now we both know where we stand."

"I have your heart," she said, pulling tiles from the bag.

"Yes, you do. There's a very real danger to me, in handing over that piece of myself to you. On the other hand… you're burning with lust. Desire will keep you kindly inclined toward me if your own conscience fails."

"You've bewitched me," Sarah said angrily.

"I've only invoked what was already there." He ate a slice of cheese, drawing it between his teeth with his tongue, and the touch of his eyes on her was as salacious. Her skin tingled where he looked at her.

"Undo it," Sarah hissed, drawing her robe closer around her.

"Undo it yourself," Jareth said with equal malice. "You threatened my death a few moments ago. I'm inclined to do you no favors."

She laid down CONFOUND. "I want those witches you've been keeping prisoner freed," she said.

"Because Nan would like it," Jareth drawled, eviscerating a cherry with his teeth. He spat the stone out, and it landed on her thigh. Wet, sticky, it made a stain like blood.

"Because _I_ would like it," Sarah said, flicking the stone to the floor.

Bisecting FINITE, UNREADY, and TACTIC, he mapped out the word INSURANCE.

"Unfortunately," he said, "They're not on offer. Not at this time. I went to a great deal of trouble to find them and acquire them. They're mine to do with as I please. And it pleases me to keep them where they are. As a guarantee toward your good behavior."

"Have you hurt them?" Sarah asked. "How many of them? How many survivors?"

"No," Jareth said, leaning back in his chair. "I'll keep my own counsel where they're concerned. After three years with me, they're practically family—and I know how milady respects familial obligations."

"Then there's nothing else for us to talk about," Sarah said. She stood and upended the board with one slapping hand. "I'm not playing anymore."

The pieces scattered in midair, and the board flipped itself over and over in slow motion, before landing back upon the table, the pieces turning and whirling back into their right places. Sarah panted in fury, hands clenched into fists, wanting to strike him.

"No," Jareth said darkly. "You'll finish what you start, when you play with me. Come here."

"No!" she said, crossing her arms and giving him a disdainful toss of her head.

"How quickly you play the girl-child when you're losing," he said, in a bored tone of voice, though his face expressed nothing of boredom. She saw lust there, and unholy glee. "And how undisciplined that girl is. I blame it on your upbringing. Milquetoast father, indifferent mother, and what remains is a child with the terrible powers of a woman and a witch, a little tyrant of a nursery kingdom. I'll not have it, Sarah."

"Go fuck yourself," Sarah said, tears coming to her eyes, foot ready to stomp. At the same time, she felt her body responding to him, warming to his words, and hated herself for it.

"Your nasty mouth will get you in trouble one of these days. I see I truly do need to take you in hand. Both hands." He patted his thigh. "Come and sit."

"No!"

"Sarah," he said, so intently that she knew she had crossed some sort of line with her refusal, "Lovely as you are in a tantrum, I won't teach anything to a witch with no self-control. Not again. Sit here on my knee. I won't hurt you."

"I'm afraid," she admitted, feeling at a loss.

"I would think you silly if you weren't." He reached out his hand to her, and she took it, fingertips brushing and then entwining. And before she had time to properly think about it, she was sitting on his knee, prim as a little girl, bashful, head full of unchildlike thoughts. "This isn't so terrible, now is it?" he asked, smoothing down her hair.

"I suppose not," she said plaintively. "Please, can't you just tell me what you want? Stop playing games with me."

"But I love our games," he whispered confidentially into her ear. "And you love them too." He cuddled her for a moment, bounced her on her knee. "Here's what I want, Sarah. The last time we were sitting like this, we had a wedding. Symbolic, unconsummated. I want more than that. I want a marriage."

"And children," Sarah said wearily. "I know what that means." She took the bag of tiles from his hands and spelled out ENSLAVED. Leaning over, she thought to stand up, make it one part of a natural motion, but he took her by the hips and pulled her back into equilibrium on his lap. "I don't want to be used. I don't want to be your path to something bad." She kept her face turned away from his.

"I never asked you to bear me children. That's been a personal scarecrow among the covens for years. Their ugly little secret, their subtle fear. A pity you've managed to buy into that fear when you've refused so many others." His arm around her waist was as tight as a belt, and the heady smell of him wafted into her nose as he bent beyond her to make his play.

DEFUSE

When he finished his move his hand strayed to her knee. "Give me children or don't. I want a union with you that goes beyond the commonplaces of human ceremony and custom. I want you to belong to me, just as I belong to you. We both want the power to have the world as we would have it. And our path to that power runs through one another. Be my witch, and I'll be your demon."

"You want to be God," Sarah said, shaking her head. It was hard to talk. All she could think of was the gentle stroking of his hand on her knee, how the nylon slid like water between her shaved skin and the insistence of his touch.

"Better than being a slave," he agreed. "But to clarify, I'm not looking to be _the_ God. I'm looking to be _a_ god. I can begin by becoming yours."

"Fat chance," Sarah said, pushing his hand away. He changed tactics, though, snaking down, catching up a length of her hem, and snaking back up, this time with his naked palm pressed against her inner thigh. His thumb stroked the top of her leg in slow circles. She didn't know if she wanted him to stop, or never to stop. And then that gentle touch was parting her knees, not roughly but by degrees, and she found herself in the position of power, the bones of her kneecap wedged into his sex, feeling him somewhat full and hot, and knowing she could cause him quite a great deal of pain if she wanted to rebuke his caress. But she didn't want to rebuke him. She wanted him to go on.

One touch of his hand on her skin. That had been all it had taken to subdue her. She hung her head.

The tiles clattered under her uncertain touch as she drew them from the bag, and for a terrible moment she was afraid she would receive a series of nonsense letters, a word unspelled, a spell unmade. The letters themselves flickered as she laid them down, traces of other letters, the true letters, on their surface. LOGIC. "How? And why?" she asked. "What are the rules for this game we're still apparently playing?" He took his hand off her knee and took her by the chin, so that she had to look at him.

"The rules are, you never command me again. You coax me. You bargain. You beg for what I have to give you." He traced his finger down over her cheek, down her throat, down the line of her cleavage. "You need me. I've watched your little coven play its little games, trying to manipulate the warp and weft of reality. But your magic always fails eventually, and will always fail, because you have no spirit to channel that power for you."

"We've done well enough," Sarah retorted, pushing his hand away from her. He made it hard to think.

"Well enough when it's a matter of bossing people around. The voice of command is the only power witches have in and of themselves. Every other wonder—movement, fruitfulness, withering, bewitchment, unbinding, the tempest—properly belong to my kind. They're ours to give, withhold, or teach—if properly invoked and asked and propitiated. If commanded, if asked."

"And they—we—haven't asked," Sarah said. "We're afraid of you, the three of us."

"Apollonaire Vaan Knecht is afraid of me, and has demanded that you women share his opinions. Why that nasty little boy is allowed to bully you and I'm not is frankly beyond me." Delicately, carefully, and very deliberately, he took one of the straps of her nightgown and her robe and drew them down over her shoulder. The fabric fell away, exposing her breast. She blushed and made a move to cover herself back up, but Jareth's eyes were on her face. "No. Leave yourself this way," he suggested.

She slipped up from his lap, and went to her chair, feeling the slipperiness between her thighs, feeling exposed to her soul, far more naked in him knowing her than in any physical uncovering. But when she sat, she made no move to hide her nakedness from him. As he watched, she bared her other breast, feeling her nipples stiffen with no more touch than the touch of his eyes. "Like this?" she asked, wishing her voice wasn't so rough with arousal.

"Yes," he said. As he sat up to take his turn, she saw that he wasn't some species of sexual clockwork, not indifferent. His blue eye had dilated until it was the shape and color of the black one, and his erection jutted out against his thigh like Cupid's bolt. Aimed at her.

ENNUI

_I know what he wants,_ she thought. _I know what he wants from me. I know the price he'll ask._

"How I long for you, Sarah," he said, confirming her intuition. His smile was as dark and sweet as the hot chocolate he poured out for them. Their fingers touched in the exchange of cups. "Show me more. Draw that alluring nightgown up to your waist, and show me your _terra incognita_."

"Unknown kingdom," Sarah said, denying his request. "The right words. That was the very thing I was going to offer you, in exchange for lessons. First exploratory rights."

PURCHASE nestled under POWER

"Os?" Jareth asked, indicating the two additional inadvertent words formed in the pattern of her play. "We?"

"Os' is Latin for 'bone,' Sarah said, with a breathy laugh. "Decipher this riddle." She took a handful of cherries, and drew her nightgown well over her wide-spreading knees. She ate one, tossing the stone into the fire, and let the rest tumble and fall into the pooled fabric between her legs.

"I'm not interested in sex," Jareth said, but his eyes were drawn to her impromptu fruit-basket. "A fig for your cherry, Sarah. A _peach_."

"Jareth, I do believe you're fibbing," Sarah chastised him. "I can tell by the way you blush. When you lie."

He laid down one word that stopped her dead.

SURRENDER

"Your father was never stern with you," Jareth said. "But I intend to be. I don't want sex. I want something else."

"What else is there?" Sarah protested. She crossed SURRENDER with SEX.

"A simple tup, that's what you're offering. And you'd tolerate it, and kill any pleasure to be had with me by thinking it a sacrifice. No. Your cherry is as cheap as your tears." He placed ING against SURRENDER, and then stood up, leaned over the game-board, and stole one of her cherries. The round succulent fruit was nudged between the lips of her sex, just brushing the tip of her clitoris, until he finally placed it in his mouth. She could hear the wetness of it as his teeth split it open. And he swallowed it, stone and all. He tossed the bag carelessly into her lap and the last four tiles spilt out, mingling with fruit.

"It's not cheap. It's rare," Sarah said. "There's only one in the entire world, and it's mine. Yours, if you want it. _My_ price."

"I want more. Mind me. Understand what I want." Jareth said intently, walking over to where the lamp of his heart burnt in blue flame. "I mean I want everything. I want to mold your sexual self to my own tastes and desires. I want to leave such an imprint upon you that when you take any other man into your bed from now until the end of your life, you will crave from him what you've received from me." He looked at her through the blue flame, watching her, hard for her. "I want you to long for me in my absence. I want to penetrate your psyche as deeply as you've penetrated mine. And in exchange, I will give you such an education in witchery that Hell itself will be affronted."

"What happens if I say no?" Sarah asked. her whole body quivered at his offer, but her self-interest and good sense forced her to ask the question.

"Nothing will change," Jareth said, and the flames cast strange shadows over his face. "We break no pattern. You'll summon me for your magic and dismiss me when you've gotten what you've wanted. I'll be your personal property. It will be a very polite version of the relationship your mother and I had. The world goes on as it did before, with one important difference: I will despise you for a coward, Sarah Williams."

"And if I say yes, will you despise me as a fool?" Tiles and cherries; so few things left in the bag or up her sleeve. There were only four letters left. She laid down the word NEAR under SURRENDER, coupled tight to ENNUI.

"Na? Ne?" He asked, gesturing toward the board.

"'Na' is no. If I agree, I have a few things I won't do. I won't let you hit me. Not with a crop, not with a belt, not so much as a mild spanking. And 'ne' means a born name. I'm Sarah, not Linda. Remember that. You'll have to be careful about those tastes and inclinations of yours. Nothing you do can be revenge. Nothing you would do to my mother. Nothing you would do, imagining me in my mother's place. I shouldn't even have to remind you of who I am, but there it is. I'll be letting myself in for some mild humiliation, knowing you, but you shan't degrade me. And I'm the one who decides if I'm being degraded. Not you. _If_ I agree."

"I have no desire to degrade you," Jareth said. He circled behind her chair, where she couldn't see his face, and his hands caressed her naked shoulders. "I only want to enjoy the power over you that witches have over their spirits. Control. Dominance. Rule. If you aren't prepared to submit to that, it's best you say no."

"And if you aren't prepared to listen to me, it's better that you never talk to me again," Sarah said. His hands moved down her shoulders, traced the curve, felt the plumpness of her breasts.

"I've enjoyed this game so much that I'd like to play again," he said against her ear. "What about you, Sarah? Do we have a game? _Are_ we playing? Or is it a draw?"

She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "You know what my answer will be. You've known it from the beginning." She squirmed as his hands became rougher, more viselike, more cruel. "I want you to cure Irene. I don't know how long it will take for me to … learn all the things you want to teach. She has a time limit. Do this for me, and you have a deal."

"It will be done," he promised her. "Tonight. I'll see to it myself. It would be a shame to let young Toby grow up without a mother." He kissed the spot on her neck where he had in her dream, and her bones went to water, her sex to a lake. "A bargain, then."

"A bargain. Thank you," she said numbly, hair on the back of her neck standing up, aroused and horrified and manhandled—demon-handled—all at once.

"You're welcome," he said, voice retreating. "I'll come for you some time in the next few days. Don't summon me, don't ask for me. Wait for me. Wait patiently. And if you have the urge to satisfy your lust, refrain. Self-pleasure is no longer your own coin to spend. The pleasure, as the saying goes, is all mine."

A cold wind poured through her window, blowing out the flames in the bronze ashtray, casting the room into darkness. Between light and dark, both Jareth and his glamour vanished. There was only a Scrabble-board full of nonsense words, a teapot of hot chocolate going to skin, and Sarah herself, sitting in her hard chair, indecently undressed, with a demon's saliva cooling against her throat.

"Fuck," Sarah sighed, and let her head hang back. The cold air chilled her between her legs, and she needed it. He had warned her to expect him. He had warned her to expect him the winner. With things as they stood, she was terrified and aroused by all that that would mean.


	10. Appropriate Amounts of Tongue

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 10:**   
**George Michael: "Father Figure"**   
**Joe Jackson: "Steppin' Out (The Big World Tour)"**

* * *

Sunday was a wash. Monday wasn't much better. Sarah had been behind in her reading in her Religion Survey II class a week ago, and those moldy old Puritans continued to elude her interest. Latin II and Medieval Women's Lit weren't looking much better, and she had two tests coming up in her drafting and her design classes which she was probably going to fail. The only thing that helped her mood was drinking, reading trashy novels, and fantasizing about pulling the fire alarms in the dorm. The amulet sat in its box and she kept it with her, in her backpack or her coat pocket, at all times. She wasn't sure if she felt better with it close to her, or worse.

Neither Polly and Nan had returned from New Hampshire—or at least, they hadn't called her. Nobody had called her. She isolated and abandoned, horny, and aggravated.

So it was, when there was a knock at her door on Tuesday evening, just after sunset, Sarah jumped up like she'd been stung.

"Who is it?" she shouted, buying a precious few seconds to brush her hair.

"The Big Bad Wolf," Jareth replied. "Open your door, so we may commence with the eating."

Sarah gave her appearance one last cursory look in the mirror before doing as she was asked.

"The door is a new one for you, isn't it?" she asked. "Usually it's the window." She was taken aback for a moment by his appearance—not because his clothes were beautiful and he wore them so unselfconsciously, but because they were normal, by current standards. Gray suit, white oxford, no tie, shoes so shiny they looked like oil, and a crackling leather trenchcoat. He'd even done something to his hair, tamed it down a bit, the length of it caught up in a ponytail that snaked down the neck of his shirt. "Come in."

"Thank you," Jareth said formally, stepping forward. He surveyed the room coldly.

"Sit down. Can I get you anything?" Sarah asked.

"A cleaner room," he said snidely. "How did it become so filthy in just a few days? You live like a pig."

"I've seen your throne room," Sarah reminded him. "You've got no room to talk about messy."

He went to the best chair, now in its customary place in the corner by the bookshelf, and twitched aside a pair of her slightly over-used panties before sitting. His fingers tapped restlessly against the armrests and he stared at her as if she were a difficult problem instead of taking her in his arms and making passionate love to her—that hope dwindled with every passing moment.

"What is it?" she asked.

The line of his mouth tightened as he stared at her. "I wanted to take you out tonight," he finally said. "I wanted to show you something special. But I need you to behave yourself. Are you capable of behaving yourself? Of doing what I say when I say to do it?"

"There's one way to find out."

"Yes, there is. Come here." He patted his knee.

"Okay," she said, demurely sitting on his lap, grateful that she was wearing her lacy bra. But he made no move to touch her, or caress her. In fact, he took her weight without shifting, without ceasing the restless movement of his fingers, without looking away from her, like she was an intensely difficult passage of Caesar's _Bellum Gallicum_ and he was without a translation.

"One of your worst personal qualities, Sarah, is that you'll always say something casually insulting at the most unpropitious moment. Even worse, you have a witch's voice, and might give commands without meaning to. I need you to be careful. There will be some danger in loose talk from you. Can I trust you to guard your tongue?"

"Piece of cake," she said, hoping to provoke him.

"That's what I thought," Jareth said, mouth curling in distaste. "So we're going to play a game now. It will be an instructive game. And either the message sinks in, or I leave and we resume our relations at an even later date. Open your mouth."

"Why?" she asked, squirming a little, imagining multiple possibilities, all of them sugar-laced with sex.

"If you can't hold your tongue, I will. I'm going to take these two fingers—" he showed her his black leather gloves, where the fingertips had been cut away—"and I am going to insert them in your most ungoverned orifice. Your mouth. The game ends when you bite me, and I leave. Or it ends when I tell you I'm satisfied, and we go out as I'd planned."

"Fine," Sarah said. She opened wide, as for the dentist. His fingers slid between her teeth, warm, perfumed, vulnerable, and she closed gently upon them.

"Resting your jaw on my fingers counts as biting," Jareth informed her. His other arm wrapped around her shoulder and squeezed her encouragingly.

She kept her mouth as open as she could, but her jaw was small. There wasn't much room to work with. After less than a minute, it began to be difficult. Her cheekbones began to ache. And Jareth just smiled at her, a mean little knowing smile, as if daring her to bite him.

_Fuck you, buddy_ , Sarah thought, narrowing her eyes, deciding to pay him back for this minor humiliation. She knew how sensitive, how erogenous a zone the hands could be. She began to move her tongue slowly, getting the feel of him on both sides of her tongue, slowly questing out to nudge at the wide-spread cleft of his fingers. She could see that it felt good to him; his chin tilted up at that angle she'd come to recognize as a telltale of his desire. His chest rose once, to catch his breath.

"Do go on if you like, but it won't change the game," he said. Still, his eyes darkened, and she could feel him breathing, smell the scent of his desire, feel the beat of his thigh's pulse against her calves. She caressed his fingers with long slow strokes of her tongue.

Then she stopped, and stared at him provocatively, daring him to order her to do any more. He didn't. His passion seemed increased, but she realized it wasn't so much passion as a sense of dominance. And then he waited, eyes boring into her face like corkscrews, and she began to feel uncertain, angry, and put in her place.

"Nnngh gh," Sarah said, which was the closest thing she could manage to "stop it."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Jareth said meanly.

"Hshoa eh!" Sarah said. Her jaw hurt, and she was tired of this.

"I'll stop in five minutes."

She didn't like the taste of him anymore. Her aching mouth and the sour taste of glove-leather and the rings he wore made her salivate, and she couldn't swallow with his fingers wedged in by her back teeth. She knew she was going to drool a moment before it happened, and she couldn't help herself. Spit made a gooey cascade over her lip and down her chin. He only smiled that triumphant smile, the same smile even after she closed her eyes for a minute so she wouldn't have to see it. He spread his fingers wider, and another spillage of drool marked her sweater. Humiliated, angry with him, she thought about biting him, and let him see the threat in her face.

"Yes," he said. "You _could_ always bite me, Sarah." And then his face changed, and she saw the pity he had for her, the sympathy, the sorrow, all the more strange because he had put her in this situation to begin with. "You can always end this. You can _always_ hurt me."

She understood then. She had the power to bite, and give him much worse than he was giving her. She had the real power—to bite, to command—and would always have that power. Always. This, with his fingers in his mouth and drool dampening her chest—this was only a brief moment. The moment of his power would pass. Hers would last her lifetime.

She met his eyes fearlessly, undefeated, calm. She huffed a sigh through her nose and accepted her lot.

"Good," he whispered, and removed his fingers from her mouth. "Time's up." He handed her his pocket-square and pushed her to her feet. "Let's go." He followed her up and straightened the uplifted collar of his trenchcoat.

"Wait," Sarah said, daubing at the spittle on her skin and clothing. "Where are we going? Should I put on a dress?"

"No, you're going to want to have your knees protected. Your jeans are fine." He lifted her coat from the wardrobe door and held it out for her as she put it on, alarmed and delighted by the implications of knee-protection.

"But—" Sarah protested.

"Bring money," Jareth said. "And slide that box into your pocket. I'd feel naked if you were without it."

"But—"

"There's a cab that should be waiting for us," Jareth said. "It won't wait forever. Chop-chop, let's go."

Sarah grabbed up her purse and shoved the heart-shaped box inside it. Jareth took her arm and led her down the steps, then through one of the deep archways cut under the long line of the ancient dorm, and out into the gated parking lot.

"I have a car, you know. I can drive us wherever we're going," she said, feeling rushed off her feet. "And why do I need money? Can't you just… make more?"

"No," Jareth said, hustling her into the cab which was still waiting, white body and yellow signage flaring in the darkness. Jareth handed the driver what looked like half of a fifty-dollar bill. Sarah would bet that the other half already resided inside the cabbie's pocket. "Money is magic."

"No shit, buddy." the cabbie said. "I was just about to leave."

"Northtown, Minos Alley," Jareth replied to him. "Turn the radio up. And if you refrain from speaking to us on the journey, there's another twenty dollars in it for you."

"You got it, friend." The radio came on, overwhelmed the cab with echoing music, something slow and laden with piano, something from a bygone era, something with the filth of the seventies lingering in it. The cab was blessedly warm, hot almost, but Jareth still put his arm around Sarah, and nestled her close in to his side. His plastic coat was like the dampener on a fire; the smell of him, rich and heady, rose up around her like smoke and erased the faint whiff of booze, pina-colada air freshener, and sick which were the essential miasma of all taxis. They went in silence for some time, the lights of the busy college town as they descended the heights clustered like heaps of yellow diamonds and peridots. It was dreamlike, hypnotizing, and even Jareth seemed entranced by the spell of the night city coming up around them, enclosing them. When he spoke again to her, his voice was a soft murmur, as if telling an old story, or making up a new one.

"Money is magic because it exists by faith. Without that faith, it's only ornamented metal, inked paper," he said, stroking her hair, stroking her back, watching the night and the life of the dark fold them in as surely as she was enfolded by his arm, his coat. "Its value is fixed by the faith that people have in it. So I, and you… we can't make money out of nothing. But there are ways to acquire it. The ways everybody in this world knows. It's the one magic that everybody knows." And she could hear in his voice how much pleasure he took in teaching her these things.

"Where did the magic come from?" Sarah's voice too was soft, little-girlish, but it felt so right in this moment to let him lead her, to let him provide the answers to her questions, and to trust his voice. She rested her head on his shoulder, put one hand over his chest, feeling his heartbeat, feeling protected and safe and loved. It was the type of intimate moment she had longed for without ever knowing that it was possible.

"It's the magic that comes from men," Jareth murmured, kissing her forehead. "Men made it."

"Oh," she said, finding the answer restful and good. And then he nuzzled closer to her and he was kissing her on the mouth, kissing her deeply.

It was so natural to be kissed in this way that it didn't quite even take her by surprise. Sarah gave up on all the little plans she'd made up over the years, internalized diagrams of how to go about kissing him, and just let herself be kissed, just let herself live in this moment. She had forgotten, even in the frenzies of her own sexual fantasies, what it was like to be kissed by him. It was like being the still center of the turning universe. His mouth held nothing fierce or hard for her, it was only as tender and warm as the space at his side, as reassuring as the wing of his coat enclosing their bodies together like the black leaves of some night-blooming plant. like their lips, meeting and parting and meeting again.

His tongue was slow as a drip of honey that never stopped in sweetness. She drew and drew on him, and he never ran dry. His savor was neverending.

"This is why you wanted the cab," Sarah said quietly when the first kiss broke. "Not just because you thought you'd be going back alone." She smiled up at him in contentment.

"This is why I wanted the cab," he confirmed, and laughed. The sign of their kissing was there in the plump succulence and the color she had brought to his lips.

"Are we going to be where we're going very soon? Is there time for you to kiss me again?" she said, earnestly, enticingly.

"Very soon," he said. "And yes."

"Then please," Sarah asked, feeling sad, feeling certain that their momentary surrender to each other would be as brief as the cab ride, "Give me more."

And like the city folding in on them, enclosing them intimately in its night-time depths, he enfolded her in both arms and kissed and kissed her again, until she wasn't sure where her mouth ended and his began, until she didn't care where his love ended and where her desire began. She wanted nothing but him. Nothing in her life but him, a perfect pearl bought at the price of everything else.


	11. Song and Echoes

 

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 11:**  
**David Bowie: "Underground"**  
**Bauhaus: "The Spy in the Cab"  
**

* * *

Minos Alley was a street so narrow that it had only one lane, and that was made for walking. Even if a driver were adventurous enough (or drunk enough) to attempt it, the interspersed steps and stairs of which it was made would have cut the attempt short. Jareth had paid the driver at the cross-street where they'd been dropped. The cab had sped away. Sarah almost wished she had gone away with it. She didn't like Northtown, the ancient remnant of the first part of the city, close enough to the river to smell of diesel and fishguts, built into the hill that rose inevitably to the citadel of Triptoleme University. Northtown had all of the decrepitude of ye olde New England and none of the nostalgic charms. Lights were few, and the buildings high and louring. It felt like an excellent place for a murder. Jareth, catching this look on her face, grabbed her arm firmly before she could run away and led her down into its labyrinthine depths.

"Where are we going?" she asked, trying not to see a pair of jolly rats bound away from their approach.

"We're taking a walk," Jareth said, holding her up as she almost slipped on the spiral-patterned cobblestones.

"This is a bad part of town," Sarah said nervously.

"Yes," Jareth said. They walked up a few more runs of stone steps, further in the alley, and then Jareth stopped, turned them around, and stopped in front of a building that seemed to be the same as all the others. They descended the intercut cellar entrance, the type that in the first days of the building's construction would have been the servants' entrance, with the guttered windows providing light to the scullery.

"Here we are," he said, bringing a ring of new-looking keys from his pocket. He tried first one and then another, and then the creaking, peeling door was opening. He went in before she did, and she paused and waited on the threshold.

"Won't you come into my parlor?" Jareth said from the darkness inside, voice echoing.

Sarah looked over the stone wall and the railings out at the way they'd come. It was so twisted that she couldn't see her way back to civilization. She didn't like that. She didn't like any of this.

"Sarah?" and now his voice had that impatient edge to it. "Will you come in, or must I come out and get you?"

Holding her breath, she went in.

The lights came up suddenly and completely, from eight industrial lamps that hung from an invisible ceiling, and blinded her. When she could see again, she was disappointed, disoriented, and unpleasantly unsurprised. Just a crappy basement, gray-painted plaster falling off of gray brickwork, indifferently patched here and there, and a line of four radiators standing against the far wall like squat tanks, chugging and clanking against the damp and cold, losing the battle. A cellar, a cell, windows boarded up and boarded over. Nothing else but a stack of forlorn spindly chairs and tables against another wall, and the detritus of squatters—newspapers, crusty abandoned blankets and clothing, empty bottles and scraps of food garbage. It smelled of mouse-shit, old beer, and abandonment. Jareth stood on a raised wooden platform against the third wall, hands still on the piped-in lightswitch.

"Well?" he asked, looking pleased with himself. "What do you think?"

"It's a dump!" Sarah said, offended by it.

"Sarah, what did I tell you earlier about minding your tongue?" His eyes narrowed, his mouth became severe.

Sarah shrugged and looked around again. There were four doors against the third wall. It was a deceptively large space, horizontal in its magnitude rather than vertical, but it was still nasty. And she looked over at Jareth again, and saw that he was invested in her reaction. For some reason, he wanted her to like this horrid place. She remembered that he had used keys, new keys, to get in… and she put two and two together and got thirteen.

"So it's yours, then. How'd you get it? Did you win it in a poker game, or did somebody wish it away to the goblins?"

"As a matter of fact, Sarah," he said with a flash of eyes, "I bought it. With money. Close the door behind you, please. Heat isn't free." And she did—feeling nervous once more about being in a strange place alone with him, but also feeling that it was already far too cold in this dank and nasty place already.

"Well, whatever you paid, it's too much. Where'd you get the money?"

"Performing on streetcorners," he replied. He might or might not have been joking. He stepped down from the stage, disentangled a single chair and table from the pile in the corner, and gave her another vulnerable look. "You don't like it?"

"I suppose it could be all right, if somebody bothered to clean it up," she said grudgingly.

"That was exactly my thought," Jareth said, with a cheerfulness that Sarah found deeply suspicious. "How smart you are to see that very problem!" He strode across the room and opened one of the four mysterious doors. A quick tug of a light-pull revealed a utility closet, with a deep sink, mops, and a few brooms which had seen better days. A narrow metal shelf below a dingy mirror held his reflection, an exquisite cigarette-case, and a heavy ashtray. These things Jareth took back to the table with him, leaving her to see the rest of the interior. The floor of the closet was elsewhere filled with three large grocery bags with what looked like cleaning supplies, scrub-brushes, a broom, a tarp, and a mop and bucket, and some cans of paint.

"You brought me here to help you clean this place up?" Sarah said, offended all over again.

"No, no," Jareth said, crossing one leg over another. "That's not what I had in mind at all."

"All right, then," Sarah said, sighing in relief.

"I brought _you_ here to clean up," Jareth said, smiling. "I'm indisposed toward manual labor, but you seem to do well enough when you're properly motivated."

"You're _kidding_ me!" Sarah shouted at him, wishing she had something to throw. "You can do anything you want! This would take you less than ten seconds to do, and you want _me_ to do it? For God's sake, why?"

"Because you can, and I can't," Jareth said, lighting up the first of what Sarah was afraid would be quite a few cigarettes. He tilted his chair back, at his ease. "This is work only you can do, Sarah. I suggest you get started. Perhaps with the garbage bags and the large broom. What a fortunate thing you were wearing your jeans."

* * *

Raging, sweating, straining, she cleaned. She filled three of the capacious black bags with all the trash in the room, and then swept. Jareth only watched her, watched her as if she were a pornographic film, watched her and smoked as if he were getting sexual satisfaction of being idle while she toiled according to his whim. The only allowance of comfort he gave her was to lay down a chair to keep her coat and purse clean and dry. The rest of her became very quickly filthy, and that was apparently also greatly pleasing to him. He smoked, and he said nothing. He did nothing. He wouldn't move his chair or the table, so she had to sweep around him, ensconcing him in a trapezoid of dirt, the industrial light haloing him in light and the glittering of the dust-clouds she sent up into the haze of blue smoke he made. She would have cleaned around the pile of tables and chairs too, but he demanded she wipe off each of these as well, and re-stack them in the opposite, clean corner. She felt her fury rise and fall, and wondered if there were any phones she could use to call a cab out of this wretched place. But if there were, she was still in the quandary of not knowing any cab numbers. Jareth, she felt, would no more offer her the Yellow Pages than he would fly her home to her nice, relatively spotless dorm room on his back. She said nothing, but she raged at him in an internal monologue that warmed her where the inadequate radiators did not.

When she was done with the sweeping and began filling the mop-bucket with hot but initially rust-tinged water, he deigned to speak to her. "The floor should be scrubbed before it's mopped," he said, with the weight of a pronunciation of God. And Sarah found herself on her hands and knees, scrubbing the entire length of the enormous floor. The soap was harsh and it burned as much as the water did, sticking little daggers of heat under her nailbeds and cuticles.

_Movement_ , Sarah thought. _I need the power of movement._ She scowled down at the brush, at her aching shoulders making endless spirals over the wooden floor, hating herself for not being able, hating him for asking this task of her.

It was then she heard a sound. It sounded like music being sung from very far away. She looked sharply over at Jareth, who was only inhaling smoke and walking his lighter between his fingertips—and looking back at her.

Sarah looked back down at the floor, and began to scrub again. Halfway across the room, knees soaked in decades worth of watery muck, the swish of the brush susurrating across the floor, she heard the music again.

"Is it you doing that?" Sarah asked Jareth, sitting back on her heels.

"Doing what?" he asked in irritation, as if his idleness were of universal importance, not to be interrupted by her questions.

"The music," Sarah asked. "Did you hear it?" She listened again. "…and the voices."

"Ah," he said, stubbing out the last in a long line of cigarettes. "Yes. I was wondering when you'd notice them. Or if." He stood up at long last and walked over to her, and took the brush from her hand and dropped it in the bucket. "Stand up," he told her. "I'm tired of you wasting my time."

"You told me to clean," Sarah snarled, getting to her feet, ready for a fight.

"The floor can damn well scrub itself. Use magic. Move your hands into this position," he said, modeling a complicated gesture with both fingers, ring finger bent on the left hand, palm forward and fingers hyperextended with the other. He drew two simple circles in the air, one large and one small. The scrub-brush flopped once in the water, like a harried fish. "Do it now so we may move on to the matter at hand."

"Take your wax-on-wax-off and shove it right up your wow-hole, Jareth," Sarah hissed. "I don't know how. I can't."

"Can't or won't?" Jareth stormed back. "Apollonaire never taught you? The Vaan Knecht children master this art by the time they're twelve years old. Why aren't you any good at it? Or are you ready to admit that boy has been playing you for a fool?"

Sarah turned her back on him, but he caught her around the middle, hugged her close to his chest so that she couldn't escape, which in that moment was all she wanted to do. Fuck the coat, fuck the purse, fuck everything, she ached and she hated him. She struggled, trying to kick him, trying to elbow him, and seeing it was no use, she went still, rage spent.

"I intend to see to the deficits in your education, Sarah. You have some considerable gaps I intend to fill." He rubbed himself slowly and carefully against her backside, and his breath in her ear was hot. "But now isn't the time for that. Just be still. Can you hear them? Listen!"

She writhed in his arms one more time, for form's sake, and then closed her eyes.

What did she hear? The sound of his breath, the sound of her own. And then that skirl of music, a low keen of baritone that could have been his voice but wasn't his voice, because he was breathing. And then… the soft sounds of conversation, hushed laughter. A wail of saxophone. Voices. Men's voices. Many. So many.

"Can you see them?" Jareth asked, swaying slightly with her, like the precipitation of a dance.

She looked, and she saw them. Not at first; it was hard to see them in the haze of smoke and dust in the room. But then she saw them by their motion, saw the set of their shoulders, the edges of chins, of hats… men. All men. Some were dancing together, cheek-to-cheek. Others were drinking together, and some others turned to the platform, where there was a throbbing pulse of darkness, like the afterimage of a flashbulb temporarily burned on the retinas, but this black star pulsed on and on. The platform, the stage—that was where the music was coming from.

"Who are they?" Sarah whispered. They were caught in the crowd now, surely, and she could feel these echoes becoming more substantial, more real, the closer they were to the stage. "What are they?"

"Ghosts," Jareth said coldly.

"They're in pain," Sarah said. She wasn't sure how she knew it, but she could feel it now, almost as clearly as she could feel her own aching hands and back, as clearly as she could feel the life and heat of him at her back. "And they're afraid. My God, is this what happens when people die? Do we all become like this?" She turned herself in his arms so she could hide her face against his chest, so she didn't have to look at them.

"Ghosts are usually only echoes," Jareth told her, rocking slowly from side to side in tune with the ghost of the music. "These aren't souls. They're not aware. They had reason to be afraid in their lifetimes. And they were in pain because they were alone, most of them. But… there didn't used to be so much pain and fear in the sound of their echoes. I brought you here to help with that."

"You want me to… banish all the ghosts?"

"No," Jareth said, holding her close. "The ghosts aren't the problem. There's a malignant spirit that lurks here. It's been feeding off of the others for years, and it won't leave while there's food for it to eat. But you, Sarah—" he took her face between his hands. "You with your witch's voice. You can make do your bidding." His hands trembled slightly against her.

"You're afraid?" Sarah asked. "You?"

"Yes," Jareth said. "It frightens me, this thing." He pointed at the negative light shivering out music on the stage. She didn't like looking at it, but it kept drawing her eye, like the tongue worried a sore in the mouth. "You see?" he asked her. "It's so strong that's captured my echo as well, from a long time ago. My shadow, a moment of me. It's using me to change the sound of their echoes. It's ugly, and it's cruel, and it won't be stopped. Unlike the others, this spirit is sentient. It knows what it's doing, and I can't speak to it without feeding it more of myself. That's what I want you to clean up."

"You want me to exorcise it?" Sarah said, brow furrowing. She'd gotten rid of other meddling and vexatious spirits before. It had been hard work, but she had done it.

"No," Jareth said. "An exorcism will just drive it out. I need to talk to this thing using a medium. I need to bargain for its nonexistence."

"What exactly are you asking me?" Sarah said. The feathertip of fear had become a wing that shadowed her soul.

"I want you to let it possess you."

* * *

_**Author's Note:** The look and layout of Minos Alley and the nightclub there are borrowed, with gratitude, from the music video for David Bowie's "Underground." Both locations also make an appearance in my story "Labyrinth: The Exile's Lament."_


	12. Sucking Out Poison

 

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 11:**  
David Bowie: "The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (As Beauty)"  
Ian Hunter: "Good Man in a Bad Time"

* * *

_**Author's Note** : Please be advised of strong sexual elements in this chapter which some readers might find emotionally troubling-it's not lemony fanservice. It's a bit ugly and a whole lotta effed up. No judgement if you enjoy that sort of thing either. Just be aware._

* * *

"I won't do it," Sarah said. "And you're terrible to ask me to do it. Letting an evil spirit possess me? I could die. My mother…" Sarah closed her eyes in pain, remembering the awful confrontation with Linda, how her own mother had tried to take over her body by pushing her soul out, a birth in reverse. She'd done it for hundreds of years, murdering her own children for a facsimile of immortality. "Jareth, she almost killed me. How can you even ask me to do this?"

Her face was still framed by his hands, and he leaned down and kissed her, brought her mouth to his like she were a ripe piece of fruit. That kiss warmed her down to her toes, tingled her nerve-endings like an aphrodisiac.

"This isn't nearly as dangerous as what you faced with Linda. This thing can't steal your body like she could. It's only a louder echo."

"Exorcism would be simpler," Sarah said.

"True, but it's not what I want here. I have some tasks I need to accomplish, and this will serve as an introduction to the work I have in mind. And I have an excellent veto for your understandable objection." He stroked her hair back behind her ears and kissed her again, possessive, drugging.

"That being?" she asked, breathless, half-accepting already.

"Because I'm _asking_ you to," he said, pinching her lips together. " _Please_." His other hand traveled knowingly down her belly and cupped her mound, and gave it a similarly cruel and slow pinch.

Sarah moaned, half in rage and half in sensual feeling, and twisted out of his grasp.

"You're a shit, you know that?"

"What I am is a demon. And milady is at my service. What luxury." He sat back down at his table, legs vulgarly spread, and lit another cigarette. "Choose what you're going to do, Sarah. Choose carefully. You can finish scrubbing my floor—finish scrubbing it in your underwear for all I care, because one way or another I'll see you naked and sweating tonight—and walk back to your wretched garret alone when you're done. Or you can do this for me and I'll reward you. Generously."

"With what, a magic lesson?" Sarah asked wearily.

Jareth shook his head and brought his hands down between his crotch in a V, outlining and glorifying his bulge.

"You are a _whore_ ," Sarah muttered.

"Oh yes," Jareth agreed. "You'll find I'm an _excellent_ whore. You'll find out quite a _few_ new things if you obey me. So. Finish one job or start another, Sarah. You're cleaning up either way. Choose now. The night waxeth and negotiating with you is losing its savor."

She looked over to the whirling pattern of anti-light on the stage. Now that she had no physical contact with him, all the echoes and the thrum of magic was harder to experience. Then she looked over at where the brush floated like a corpse in the dirty cooling bucket, and at all the rest of the filthy length of the floor that she hadn't scrubbed yet.

And then she looked at him, in his cloud of white and his tight suit, an angel of sex and forbidden knowledge, looking at her with his full attention. And she gave a forlorn sigh, rolled up her sleeves, and began to work.

* * *

Sarah closed her eyes and listened. The radiators sent up a muffled and regular clanking. Like the cadence of the scrubbrush against the floor, it was like the line of a melody, slow and sensual, the sound of a forlorn voice crying out in the wilderness, crying out in song.

"You were here," she said softly. "It's your voice. A long long time ago. Do you remember the song you were singing?"

A pause, a silence, and the gentle sound of his exhalation. "Lorca. 'Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint,'" Jareth said into the darkness behind her eyes.

"Jareth, they're here because of you. All of these echoes." She opened her eyes, and he was sitting at a table in a smoke-filled hall full of men. They danced together and danced alone, moving slowly, as if underwater. "It's you," Sarah said, seeing him appear and disappear as the crowded throng moved around him. "These ghosts are hung on the memory of your voice. Sing. Sing that song."

Jareth stood up, bright, bright, shining like a lamp in the darkness, and the ghosts were shadows he cast. He stood on the stage, and clasped his hands before him, and began to sing one note—one long, soft note that penetrated to every corner.

She felt the presence of bodies around her, physical bodies, warming the cold space. She could smell them. She could almost feel them jostling up against her. "Listen to him," she told them, using all the power she could summon into her voice. "Listen. You hear him? He is singing for _you_. Just you. Just you."

Jareth's voice reached a wordless crescendo that broke with a cry of pain. And she could hear him beginning to sing a song whose words she knew, but the melody was new, soft, consoling.

_"Never let me lose the marvel_   
_of your statue-like eyes, or the accent_   
_the solitary rose of your breath_   
_places on my cheek at night."_

Among the men who comforted each other in their loneliness she felt a presence made more powerful and recognizable in its loneliness and despair by being in the crowd. She elbowed her way among the others, searching it out.

_"I am afraid of being, on this shore,_   
_a branchless trunk, and what I most regret_   
_is having no flower, pulp, or clay_   
_for the worm of my despair."_

There he was, standing stock-still while the rest of the crowd moved and swayed like sea anemones to the tide of the song. Alone, still, a back unusually straight as if there were an iron bar strapped to his spine, or shackles on his feet. Sarah elbowed her way past the other ghosts in the crowd so that she could see him. Tall, sandy-haired, there was too much self-control in his face for there to be room for beauty, but he was beautiful as he listened to the music. His eyes were wide with bewilderment, and his mouth was wide and sensual, half-open, panting with some sort of internal crisis that was more shock than lust. Looking at Jareth, looking at Jareth.

"Do you hear him?" Sarah asked. "He's calling to you."

"I can't," the man said, shaking his head, eyes fixed on the object of his obsession. "What is life even worth after this? I can't go back to what I have. He's ruined it for me."

"No," Sarah murmured. She took his hand in hers. It was warm and strong. "He called to you, and now you're calling him. Go to him. He wants you."

The man's lower lip trembled. "No," he said, voice full of despair. "No, never." Shaking his head as if clearing away a train of thought, he looked down at her and saw her. "Who _are_ you?"

"I'm Sarah. Who are you?"

"Phillip. What are you doing here?"

"Helping," Sarah said. "He'll listen to me. He always listens to me. What do you want to say to him?"

He only shook his head in refusal.

_"If you are my hidden treasure,_   
_If you are my cross, my dampened pain,_   
_If I am a dog, and you alone my master."_

"Step through me," Sarah commanded him. "Speak through me. Now. Before I change my mind. He won't refuse you. I swear it."

His hand in hers was hard and desperate. He looked from her, up to the stage, and back again. Tighter and tighter, and Sarah wanted to pry those cruel fingers off of her. It was like being dragged under by a drowning victim. The ghost hit her body like the cold crash of a sudden wave… and she was the one drowning.

_"_ _Never let me lose what I have gained,  
And adorn the branches of your river  
With leaves of my estranged Autumn."_

Terror dogged every one of his steps to the stage, where the singer was singing. He wasn't human. Nothing so perfect could be human. Phillip was torn in two pieces, wanting to run away from him, and wanting to run to him. Loneliness had compelled him to visit the club tonight, hoping that some brief sexual encounter might purge that ache for a moment. He'd been surprised outside the door, hearing the songs the musician sang, knife-sharp music that was poetry, refined, made holy by his voice. He should have run away.

And now it felt as though he'd done nothing but listen and yearn for this music for years, and years, and years.

He went up to the stage and looked up into the face of his god, who was singing a song about rescue from an underground life and the absence of affection.

"I love you," Phillip said to him in a quietly conversational tone of voice. His words were lost in the crowd and the house's tinny three-piece band, but the god heard him nonetheless.

And the god… faltered. He missed a word, transfixed like a butterfly on the pin of Phillip's adoration.

Something happened then, something magical that Phillip would remember even until the moment of his death. The god touched his fingers to his lips, and set them on the microphone, which began to sing for him. No one else in the crowd seemed troubled; Phillip wasn't troubled, he was awestruck and unsurprised. A creature like this might do anything, anything, and who were mere mortals to question what he decreed? The god descended the stage, the altar of worship, and reached out one hand to him, inviting him in to his embrace.

Terrified, Phillip turned and ran. The crowd parted before him like sleepwalkers, enchanted by the sound of the singer's voice, which went on and on… the doors to the jakes were locked, occupied by lovers or those with full bladders. The door to the utility closet was open, though he locked it behind him once he shoved himself inside.

He pressed his palms into his eyes and cried in three harsh sobs, all he would allow himself. Then he turned on the water and splashed it in his face. He looked up into the mirror.

In the mirror behind him, the god. Of course. Nothing could prevent a god's passage, certainly not something as insipid as a door to a closet.

"Why did you run?" the god asked him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I wanted to dance with you."

"No you didn't," Phillip said, hot-eyed, angry, humiliated by his own deficiency. "How could you?"

"Because you love me," he said. Coaxingly, carefully, as one might with a fearful animal, the god wrapped his arms around Phillip's chest and leaned his head against his shoulder. "Because you are very beautiful when you love me. You called me, and I came. What would you have of me?"

"What?" Phillip asked, though he could feel the arousal of the other man—no, not a man, a god!—against his ass. "Nothing!" he stammered. "Nothing. Just… just to love you. That's all I want. I'm sorry. Please, let me go away. I'm sorry."

"Tell me your name."

"Phillip," he stuttered. "Phillip Neuland Channard. Doctor-Phillip-Neuland-Channard," he said in a rush, shocked at himself. He never so much as carried ID into clubs like this, certainly never gave his name to anyone who might recognize it later. But this was no ordinary situation.

"I'm Jareth. Well, Doctor-Phillip-Neuland-Channard, you say you want just to love me. So love me." Those long and clever fingers were sliding down his trouser-front, were grasping him, and he found himself erect in the god's hands, that part of himself struggling to be touched. "Love me with pleasure."

Phillip let out a moan as he was taken in a tight embrace and stroked and stroked until he thought he might die of it, so exquisite was Jareth's touch. His eyelids fluttered, his vision strobed, and all he could see was the stern and determined face of the god looking over his shoulder, and his own face giving back a grimace of terrified ecstasy as he felt himself nearing a spill.

"No," he said, just before the crisis could overtake him. In their shared narrow space, he pulled the god's hands off of him and turned and knelt before him. "This is how I want to worship you," he whispered, unbuttoning him, unzipping him, until he was free.

"God's fucking _bones_ ," he hissed, getting a good look at the bobbing cobra before him, and then up at Jareth's face. Jareth only smiled affectionately and ran his hand through Phillip's hair. Then that grip tightened in her hair, and she found himself on her knees, and he was bare before her, and he wanted her, but his face held a certain amount of compassion.

"Sarah," Jareth said. "You need not go so far."

"No," she said, full of untapped lust, understanding what it would be like to have him in her mouth, in this moment of truly knowing what felt good to a man… "No. I want this."

As her lips, as his lips, explored the texture of his ripe and hot head, she sucked him in as she might have sucked a cherry. And he was undone by her, a god undone! He leaned back against the sink, half sitting against it for balance, thighs ridiculously spread between dropped trousers and pants, his hands in his hair not tugging or forcing, but stroking, encouraging, as he took him in as deeply as he could in one go, and then began a slow rhythm upon him, deep in his throat, opened to receive him, relishing the tang of his sweat and flowing juices. Phillip felt his own penis throb in sympathy with the pulse of Jareth's pleasure, but one moment before it could become a technical exercise, Jareth grabbed him under the armpits and brought him up against him, and he was kissing him, his tongue against his tongue, striving and sucking in tune with the crossed swords of their flesh below. One grip. His hands. The pleasure. His body!

His head went nova; he saw stars.

He slowly became aware of himself. He found he was weeping like a child in Jareth's arms. The god, who was only holding him close, and kissing his tears away.

"I died because you didn't love me," he sobbed.

"Precious thing," Jareth said tenderly, rocking him in his arms. "Forgive me. I should have reached out to you that night. I almost did. Your love was real, and I was afraid of you."

"You don't love me."

"Phillip, there are a thousand thousand stories of us, and in one of those stories, I love you. Think of that, and be free of your pain. You can go where nothing ever hurts again."

"How can I?" he wept. "How can I, when I still love you so?"

"Because _this_ is the story where I love you," Jareth said. "Doctor-Phillip-Neuland-Channard, I love you." And he saw there were tears in the god's eyes—tears for him, each one a cut diamond of perfect and priceless worth.

He gave one long shuddering breath. He felt himself washed clean, forgiven, absolved of all burden of self-hatred and fear.

"Go now," Jareth said, laying his hand upon his brow. "Go serenely."

… and he was gone.

Sarah slowly became aware of herself. She found she was weeping like a child in Jareth's arms. Her god, who was only holding her close, and kissing her tears away. Her cunt ached with the aftermath of fulfilled lust. She had had her first orgasm with another person, and it had been with Jareth, and she hadn't been herself at all. She was devastated.

"Shhh," he said, cradling her in his arms. Her jeans and underwear were tangled around her knees, and his hands gently groped and squeezed her naked buttocks. Had he penetrated her, with his penis or his fingers? She felt sore enough that he might have, though if he had used his penis, he hadn't come inside her. Her breath caught on a sob and she swallowed the rest of her tears.

"Who was he?" Sarah asked in a whisper.

"There was a police raid on this place that night. It was … 1965, I think. Perhaps '66. Some of the patrons they beat with clubs, and some they carted off to the city jail. There were laws about public decency in those days, but this crackdown was unusually ugly.  Phillip wasn't brave enough to face the public humiliation of outing. So he killed himself." Jareth flicked the tears off his cheeks as if he were banishing insects. "He hung himself in his cell. His ghost has haunted this place, and the memory of me, ever since. But it's over now, Sarah. He's over. You gave him peace. I'm grateful to you, for that."

She leaned away from him and drew her clothes back on over her nakedness and her hurting, hollow space.

"He's at peace and me... I hurt now. I let you hurt me." She refused to look him in the face. She only looked at the door. She heard the sounds of cloth drawn over skin as he put his own clothing back on.  "It's only worth it if this is a story where you love me. Is this a story where you love me, Jareth?"

He didn't answer for a long moment. And then he drew his fingers through the long skeins of her hair. "It's too soon to know," he replied. "But I think, Sarah… I think I want it to be so, if you would have it be so."

"Tell me you're sorry," she said, leaning her head against the door and crying again.

And he for his part didn't rebuke her for crying or tell her to stop. He only took her hand in his and opened the door for them both. He didn't apologize to her with any audible word.


	13. Consummation

 

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 13**  
**Brigitte Bardot et Serge Gainsbourg: “Je T’aime/Moi Non Plus”**  
**NIN: “Sanctified”**

* * *

_**Author’s Note:**   Soooo… this chapter is pretty much smut from end to end.  For those wanting more salacious and explicit details, you've come to the right place.  This chapter on FF is censored to accord with the M rating._

* * *

It was in this defeated state that he led her back into the hall, whose silence now deafened her.  His silence, also deafening, as he collected their coats and her purse over one arm and unlocked the first of the mysterious doors against the wall.  Unlocked it twice; one was a commonplace door and the other was a latticed metal gate.  Locked it then behind them and drove her up the stairs with one hand pushing against her lower back.  To what new monstrosity?  Her tears ebbed and flowed in moments as they walked up the flights of steps, first one landing and then a second, high up in the attic of the building, and unlocked a third door and pushed her inside.  To what? To bread and water?  To some other obscene sexual rite?   
  
A bedroom.  Sheets so new she could see the creases from where they had been folded in their packets.  A long sideboard with closed doors serving as a catchall for a bar service, a silver bowl of fruit, two packages of new shirts, and an old-fashioned kerosene lamp, which he lit.  Two tatty mismatched armchairs, one of which became a depository for their belongings, before a cold fireplace.  Stacks of books piled up in short towers against one sloping wall.  A bedroom with a locked door and a single round wide window.  A bedroom.  Was this going to be her cell now?  He pushed her to sit upon the bed and she covered her face in despair.  
  
“I can’t,” she begged him, as he knelt before her and began to untie her shoes.  First one then the other, then one sock or another.    “I can’t.  Please don’t make me.  I can’t,” she said as he pulled off her sweater.  “No,” she said, as he unbuttoned her blouse, unzipped her filthy jeans and pulled them off her hips, off her legs, easily as undressing a doll, so that she sat naked of everything but her one lacy and frivolous bra, the bra she’d worn all day in hope of him seeing it.  She crossed her arms in front of her breasts but that made no difference to her shame and her fear.  “Please stop!” she begged him.  She looked at her dirty knees and tried to stop crying, and found she couldn’t.  She looked at the floor and saw only the shiny tips of his shoes, which stepped away from her.  She heard sounds of glass and liquid, but didn’t understand what they meant until his shoes reappeared in her narrow field of vision and he waved a short glass of dark liquor  in front of her eyes.  She had no idea what to do with it.  She wasn’t even sure if he was talking to her or not.  Sound rushed past her ears, and it was the sound of her own breath coming quickly, too quickly, in panic and sorrow.  
  
And then he was on his knees before her, so that she couldn’t help but see his face, and he was saying her name, reminding her of her name.  “Sarah,” he said. He was saying her name and he seemed to have been saying it for a long time.  His eyes were intense with some immediate feeling for her, or she wouldn’t have been able to hear him over her own gasps. “Sarah,” he said.  “Breathe.  I’m not going to rape you.” And he caught up the rhythm of her own hyperventilation until their chests were rising and falling as one, and he slowed and slowed and she followed until she could see again, could feel again, could breathe again normally.  
  
He placed the glass on her thigh.  “Drink that,” he said, and stepped away.  
  
She took it like an antidote, gulping it down.  The taste was smooth, mellow, not burning at all until it slid into her stomach, where it only gently warmed her.  It helped almost immediately.  She put the glass between her legs balanced herself by spreading both hands out wide.  The sheets were very soft, and the bed itself plush, a feather-mattress whose downy quills pierced out somewhat here and there, pricking her naked legs and her palms.  She brushed her hands slowly back and forth, the opening and closing of wings.  Then she shook her hair back and looked up at him.  And he was looking back at her, not in meanness or with some cynical barb on his tongue, just watching her, concerned for her.  
  
“Is that better?”  
  
“A little.  But please don’t touch me again.  Not until I ask you.”  
  
“You know, your eyes are the palest green, but they go dark as poplars when you’re angry, or when you’re lust-struck, or when you cry.”  There was quiet reproach in his voice, though whether for her or himself was hard to say.  “You could have stopped it.  I asked if you wanted to stop, and you said no.  Must I be responsible for your mistakes?”   
  
“Be quiet,” Sarah said, quietly.  “You _know_ why.” She bit her lower lip and then licked the corner of her mouth, lost in awkward self-examination, and caught the trace of the taste of him there.  The physical memory of her shame was there on her own tongue.  “I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.  And you—you said—”  she shook her head.  “You wanted that for me.  Not in the cab.  I was ready for you.  It would have been good.  But you didn’t want that for me.  You took away my first time with you, and you didn’t have to.  It’s the ugliest thing anyone has ever done to me.”  
  
“Your mother—” and Sarah cut him off almost simultaneously. 

“No.” She swallowed the last of what was in her glass and put it on the floor.  The drink was potent and it was quelling the internal shaking that still rocked her soul, but she was nowhere near numb yet.  “The _ugliest_ thing anyone has ever done to me,” Sarah repeated.  “ _You_ are ugly.”  
  
“Am I?” he said, taking her words for a challenge.  “And yet, you still want me.”  He unbuttoned his coat and tossed it over the chair.  He stripped himself slowly and carefully for her, watching her watch him, until he stood, gloriously naked, hairless as a marble statue, his huge penis nested quiescent between his thighs.  “You like this,” he said, caressing himself from neck to hip.  “But there’s even more I could offer you.  Would you like me young?”  His face flowed, something coltish in the cant of his hips.  He was young, painfully young, a manchild in the first breath of manhood, slim and fragile as a peeled stick.  “Would you like me small?”  He took his genitals in his hand and they became small enough to appear almost manageable.  “I can remake myself in any image you desire.  You need only want it from me, and I will bend for you.  You need only ask.”  
  
She turned her face as far away as she could manage, so she only had to see him out of the very corner of her eye.  “No,” she said.  She stared off into the middle distance, troubled, but he infected her ears with lust since she wouldn’t let it enter through her eyes.  
  
“The sight of your red red lips sucking on me is something I’ll never forget.  And your erect clitoris was like the stamen of some succulent flower where I touched it.  And your cunt, wet as a cut peach.  Ripe.  Slick.  I wanted to taste what I was holding, that ghost be damned.”  She heard him breathe.  “I want to taste you _now_.  I want you.  Despite everything else, I did intend to give you pleasure tonight.”     
  
She forgot that she was ashamed, and she leaned backward on her braced arms, legs pointing out, strength and vulnerability together in the feeling of her arms and her outthrust breasts straining against her brassiere.  “Not yet,” she said.  “I still hurt.”  She felt calm.  She felt as calm as she had in the taxi, being kissed, with only the ache of her sex to remind her of her emotional pain.   
  
Directly, deliberately, she spread her legs wide, letting him see the entirety of her, the place that hurt, the pain he’d helped cause.   
  
“This is yours, because I gave it to you,” Sarah said.  “But it’s still mine.  It was mine _first_.  Terra incognita only to you.  To me, it’s known.  You mustn’t abuse it.  I’ll suffer if you do.”  She caressed herself with the bend of her wrist from knee to the lowest curve of her belly, and settled two fingers between her nether-lips.   
  
His eyes flickered down to watch her fingers comfort and pet her exposed sex.  She was slippery from her own lust, already deeply wet, which only made the motion of her fingers more subtle, more pleasing to herself.   
  
“When I think of what you let happen, I feel cold,” Sarah said.  “I hate you then.  I want you very far away from me, so I can’t hurt you like you hurt me,” she said, stilling her self-caress, protecting herself with her hand instead.  “It took less than a week for you to betray me.”  She looked him full in the face, and he was himself as she knew him.  Familiar, her familiar.  To all outward appearances, a striking man in his late thirties with a shock of golden hair.  To her, the very devil.  
  
“What you did to me was obscene,” Sarah said.  “And maybe it wasn’t the only reason, but what you did, you did because I’m Linda’s daughter.  You forgot my name and degraded me.  And you enjoyed the pain you gave me.”  Her eyes filled with tears again, but she sucked them back into her throat where they diluted the taste of him deep inside her.  “You broke our deal.”

He closed his eyes and sighed in defeat.  _You’ll remember how I look with your cock in my mouth, Jareth, and I’ll remember how you look with your foot in your mouth.  All other things equal, I think I’ve gotten the better end of the bargain._   She smiled in her sorrow.   
  
He shook his head and huffed.  He turned his back on her and clasped his hands behind his back, looking at the floor.  Irritated that she could notice any other details, she noted that the view of his backside was at least as inspiring as the view from the front.  “I did, didn’t I?”  He sighed again.  “Will you leave me now?  Or set the collar back around my neck?”  
  
“Jareth,” Sarah whispered huskily.  “You gave me a second chance.  I don’t see why I can’t give you one.”  
  
“But you could win!” he said, whirling on her in bewildered anger.  “Don’t you want to win?  More than anything?”  
  
“No,” Sarah said.  She opened her legs wide, let her sex bloom out like a honey-flower, holding his gaze the entire time.  “What I want more than anything... is you.”  
  
“Even now?”  
  
“Oh yes,” she whispered.  “Shall I show you?”  She pressed the fingertips of both hands into the cups of her bra, caressing herself, flicking her own nipples between a dry left hand and a dew-slicked right one.  And she watched his face as the tips of her breasts hardened, pointed, as she provoked him with them, offering them forward, then concealing them coyly.  
  
“Do you like this?” she breathed, and finally lifted her bra up so their bubbly firmness was pressed down and full against the parabolas of underwire and lace.  “I can see you like this.”  She flicked one wet nipple and traced the last of her gathered come down her belly in a straight line to her sex.  “Isn’t this nicer than watching me scrub a floor?  Even nicer than having me suck you?  Don’t you like watching me do this for you?”  She parted her outer labia and ran her wide-spread index and pinkie against the joint between mound and inner thigh.  
  
“Yes,” he hissed.  
  
“Then protect me.  Protect me from yourself more than anything.”  
  
“I promise,” he said, and she could see that he was quite serious, quite effectively rebuked.      
  
“I’d like another drink.”  She pushed her empty glass forward with her foot.  It toppled and she rolled it to him with a flick of her toes.  “If you’ll let me have another?   Please?” she coaxed, wanting him to tell her no, or yes.  
  
“I think… perhaps just one more for you.  But only one,” he said authoritatively, with only a little surprise at suddenly being handed back the reins.  He refilled her glass.  
  
“Thank you,” Sarah said, looking up at him as he brought it to her.  He stepped between her wide-spread legs to give it to her, to press the glass firmly between her lips, which parted docilely.  He didn’t touch her with anything of his body, but he tilted the small dose of liquor down her throat so that she must drink, or choke. Liquid threads that escaped her ran down her chin and between her breasts, but the whole amounted only to a small swallow.  When she was done, he cast the glass aside, and she heard it shatter against the wall.  It made a sound like the crunching of the glass at a Jewish wedding, symbolic of the breaking of the virgin’s knot, the consummation of marriage.  And he trembled between her legs, erect, desperate to touch her, willing to obey her.   
  
She spread her arms out wide on the bed once again, delighting in the feel of every texture it had, and the feeling of the cold air on her sweating body.  “Isn’t it more fun this way, this game?  When we’re playing with each other instead of against each other?”   
  
His eyes rolled upward in self-disgust, and he laughed.  He ran his hands through his tightly-bound hair, bringing it back into glorious disarray.  “Sarah,” he said.  “Oh, Sarah.  You precious thing.  Ask and I’ll answer.  Make any wish and I’ll grant it.  Just let me touch you.”  
  
“Make me come.  Please.”  She reached out her arms to him in supplication.  “Please.  Please.  Make me come and _say my name_ when you make me come.  That’s all I want.”  
  
“Sarah,” he said, and he was tight between her wide-spread thighs.  “Sarah,” he said, and he was pressing her down and back into the feather-bed.  “Sarah,” and his lips were kissing her breast-tips as if they were as sweet to him as his tongue was to her.  
  
And his tongue in her mouth, and his fingers spreading her cunt as widely and thoroughly as he had done to her mouth, and she was as wet around him there as she’d been around him then.   
  
And he was drawing his mouth down over the paths she had laid out for him in her own spittle, began to eat her, and she felt the fire of his soul working upon the fire in her body, the apex of the flame-tongue burnishing her pleasure-pearl, and he was relentless, endless, eternal.  She grasped the back of his neck with her crossed knees, urging him on.   
  
“Sarah,” he spelled out in fire upon her.   
  
“Jareth,” she wept, feeling the pleasure crash down upon her, pleasure bearing her up.  Oh, his tongue was as sweet to taste below as it had been above!  She was dying.  Dying.  “Jareth!”  And she shattered into a thousand pieces only to have them cast back into the fire and forged anew, for he wasn’t satisfied with her first orgasm.      
  
He made it up to her threefold, and it seemed in that long duration where she sweated out the agonizing moments between one cascading peak and the next, and the next, that he was everywhere upon her at once in hands and mouth and the wet traceries of his penis against her stomach, yet nowhere within her.  But his fingers did come within her again at the last, and she felt an unbearable stretching as he used her own shuddering pleasure to instruct her body in how she might eventually receive him there.   
  
“Sarah,” he said, as she shook beneath him, and it was he on his hands and knees, hovering above her, kissing her deeply, telling her her name. 


	14. Consecration

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**Soundtrack for chapter 14:**  
NIN: “Closer”  
Dead Can Dance: “The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove”

* * *

  
_Author’s Note:_ _As before in the previous chapter, see here again: It’s almost wall-to-wall erotic content, with full and explicit details.  For something slightly toned down, see the Fanfiction version, listed under author Ellen Weaver, same title._  


* * *

  
In the aftermath of her pleasure, she discovered she was shaken, shaken to her core.  There was fear there, in how she’d let go, lost all control of her will and herself, and deep gratitude in how he’d caught her.  There weren’t tears, though she felt so profoundly overwhelmed that she might have otherwise cried.  When he rolled onto his back, she pressed herself against him, under his wing once again.  He didn’t say anything.  If he had asked her to do anything in that moment, she would have done it.  He asked nothing.  When his arm came about her to bring her closer to him, it was like a blessing.   
  
“Thank you,” she whispered humbly, giving his chest small and tiny worshipping kisses.  “Thank you.  Thank you.”   
  
The world seemed different.  Not just the feeling of her body, but the feeling of the world itself.  She felt as if an immense supernatural energy had passed through every fiber of her flesh, and then gone somewhere—not out of her, but passed through her whiskey passes through a glass.  It was a little like the ghost’s possession, but much more like the very first time Jareth had directed and channeled her magical potential on the streets of New York, receiving it and refining it, then pouring it back out into her.  Then, he had used pain to provoke the transference.  This time, he had used pleasure.  But no harm had been done her either time.  If she hadn’t been a witch, she might not have discerned anything supernatural had happened at all.  
  
“Tell me what you’ve done?” she whispered. She folded one leg over him, so that the core of her dissipating heat kissed his thigh.   
  
The intense heat his skin gave off was matched by her own.  “We’re opening a door,” he told her, pulling her thigh up a fraction higher, opening up her sex a sliver wider.  “A door, a space for me, for you.”  He kissed the top of her forehead.  
  
She circled around his belly and rested her thumb in the cup of his navel.  She was glad to find his bellybutton; she’d laid several bets with herself as to whether or not he had one.  But there it was, the signifier of a connection with a human mother, Mem, the first witch to draw him out of the fire by an umbilicus of magic, and need.  She too had a navel; she too had come from her mother.  
  
She felt the muscles in his belly tense as her gentle examination went lower, daringly close to his penis.  He had been quite, quite hard during the act of cunnilingus, but he had gone somewhat soft in the afterglow.  Her afterglow.  She wanted to make it up to him.  She wanted to touch him, to give him pleasure, to explore his body in the same way he’d explored hers.  But when she went to touch him, he flinched away, just slightly, just a little, and she went back to places that seemed safer to him—the apex of where his thighs met, the perfect architecture of his hipbones.  
  
“Are you okay?” she asked him.   
  
“I prostituted you tonight, and made use of you for my own ends, and you ask me if _I’m_ okay,” he laughed bitterly.  He put his hand over his, and guided her over the bifurcation of his body, from breastbone to just above the apex of his sex.   
  
“I knew you wanted something like this from me from the very beginning,” Sarah replied softly.  “It didn’t hurt me.  But I think it hurts you.  Am I hurting you?”   
  
He pressed her hand flat against his abdomen and said nothing for minutes.  Then, finally, not looking at her, but looking outward, inward, elsewhere, he said, “There are moments here, when you touch me, that I feel your mother touching me.” he said quietly.  “You touch me like she would.  I know it’s not your fault.  You’re unlearned.  You touch me by instinct the way she would have touched me by design, but I don’t know quite how to feel about that.”  
  
There it was.  The elephant in the room, far more massive than his erection.  She was in bed with her mother’s lover.  He had been her mother’s lover for centuries, and now he was hers.  She tried to summon some sense of revulsion for this incestuous one-off, but couldn’t.  The only thing Sarah felt was a need to hold her mother’s presence at a distance, to protect Jareth from someone who wasn’t physically there but nonetheless was very much present in his mind, and still marked on his flesh.  
  
Even tenderly, even lovingly, she had no idea what to say.  So she shrank back from him, afraid her touch was polluting.  She made a space between them and rested herself on a braced elbow.  “Does it hurt when I touch you?”  
  
He tossed his head and made a wry face.  “No, it feels good.  That’s the problem.”  He raised his hand and his smoking paraphernalia leapt through the air from his pockets and into to his hand, along with an orphaned bar glass.  He lit a cigarette and smoked there in the bed, leaning against the fraying plaster wall, the glass balanced on his taut belly, prosaically post-coital.  “I’m just as capable of feeling pain as a human man.  It’s not about remembering the pain she gave me.  When she struck me or cut me or dismembered me—the act didn’t last forever.  Linda might have been a witch, but she was still a human being.  Mortal.  There were limits to her.  Even to her strength.  Even to her cruelty.”  The glass rang in a low bright note as he tapped out ashes into it.  The sparks that flew from the cherry flew upward and roosted like tiny orange fireflies in the corners of the sloping ceiling rafters.   
  
“What hurts is… the times, and there were so many of those, when she forgot to treat me as her slave and instead needed me… like she might need a man.  And I don’t mean just a pleasing piece of orgasmic furniture or as a device for invoking her will.  I mean she needed me as a young woman bred in a time when women were believed to be innately inferior creatures needed a man.  To protect her, to cherish her.  That was how she needed me, and that was what I gave her.  Even after she became horrifying, and made me into a horror.  And despite all of that, there have been times in the past three years when I’ve longed to have her reach out to me and touch me in love again, just as you just have, even knowing what that would mean.  I’ve been… quite lonely.”    
  
“You’re not a horror,” Sarah said fiercely, laying a hand on his chest, willing him to believe it.  “You’re not.  You’re _not_.  And you don’t have to go back to her.  Not ever.”  
  
“I wish she were dead,” Jareth said flatly.  “I wish you’d let me kill her.”  
  
“I understand why,” Sarah agreed warily.  “But it’s too late for that now.”  And then she said no more, remembering the lesson in holding her tongue.  There was nothing she could say that would give him much comfort or wouldn’t lead to a fight.   
  
“I thought it would be very easy to exploit your sexuality, Sarah, and I’m finding it’s not, even with your permission.  In the balance of accounts, I’m greatly indebted to you.  You’re not like your mother in anything but the most superficial—I don’t know why I’m talking about this now.  I don’t want to.” He swallowed the rest of his words unspoken, his chest rising and falling with the memory of some anguish he wasn’t ready to share.   
  
“We’re going to have to talk about it sometime,” Sarah said.  “It’s kind of a root issue for us.”  
  
“Yes, but for Hell’s sake, not now.  Let’s talk about something else.”  Ashes went into the glass; sparks lit up in the air one by one.  They formed patterns and designs that her eye couldn’t catch.  They rained down from the ceiling in showers of amber and yellow gold, and she realized he was playing around with magic the way that she might idly doodle in her notebooks, the act detached from conscious design, the way a badly panicked Catholic might recite a Hail Mary under his breath without being aware of speaking aloud.   
  
“Why do you smoke so much?” Sarah asked, trying to keep him in the present and away from whatever troubling ideas were preying on him.  
  
He blew out an arch of smoke that resolved itself into the shape of an owl flying in the golden rain.  “It’s like eating,” he replied shortly.  “I’m a creature of fire.  Flesh called out of the fire.  And it feels good to do it.  Like masturbation in the absence of sex.”  
  
_Or a cigarette instead of a snack_ , Sarah thought, reminded of the big-eyed skinny girls from her Art Survey course the previous Fall, who she had only ever seen standing outside the student union smoking and never inside the cafeteria eating.  _My mother kept you hungry_ , Sarah thought, looking up at him, wondering how many times he’d had to make do with an offering of his own making, instead of being cared for as he ought.   He stubbed out the rest angrily into the glass and deposited it with the case and the lighter on the low lip of the rounded windowsill.   
  
“A very young familiar doesn’t know how to tap into the sexual energy of his witch.  We’re like children at the breast.  There is certainly pleasure for the mother and the child in suckling, and pan when the baby bites the breast and the breast is taken away from him, but none of it is precisely sexual.  But just like human beings, we reach a point of puberty.  When we get older, if we get older, or if the witch desires it, we awaken to the possibilities of sex.  Like you, like Thusnelda, I was desperate for it, longing for it, and the witches who had me at that time refused to give it to me.  That’s when I went to your mother.”  He reached out and fondled one of her breasts, turning her off-kilter bra into a torture device, letting the edge of drawn-up underwire and lace stimulate her nipples where he himself refrained.  “Linda made an impression on me.  I want to make an impression on you.”   
  
“You do,” Sarah said ruefully.  “You have.”  She sat up and came closer to him, arched over him on her hands and knees, her breast-tips and the tips of her hair stroking over his bare chest.  She offered herself, and he took her in both hands, feeding himself on first one breast and then the other.   
  
“Your mother’s sexual energy was male in nature.  And I don’t mean that she wanted to be a man or that she had penis-envy, precisely.  It was the way she used her magic.  Male energy has more limits than female energy.  It must be periodically released, or it festers.  The longer the wait for release, the less useful that release is.  An uncontrolled explosion of magic.  It takes time and practice to learn how to accrue the power to be had there, how to spend it out slowly enough to make it useful.  But once it’s spent, either way it’s gone.  It needs time and effort to rebuild.  Like bank interest on capital.”  He guided her to grasp him with her palms and fingers.  “Lightly,” he said.  “Gently.  Just touch me.”  
   
She had nothing to compare him to.  The skin of his genitals was incredibly soft, more tender and yet more resilient at the tip.  He pressed her away from too much stimulation and encouraged her to slide her fingers up and down his shaft.  It gave her a physical memory of the way she petted cats when she wanted to please them, almost more the intention of petting than any of the deliberate firmness that dogs preferred.  He didn’t seem quite as aroused as she was, which she thought was patently unfair.   
  
“The sexual energy inside _you_ is essentially female.  It builds and it builds, and the more it’s satisfied, the more it grows.”  He palmed her sex as he might hold a fruit, or a crystal, and she had to let him go to hold herself upright.  Her spine curled in a bow so she might offer him everything.  But he only held her.  “You’re ever-ripening, and the longer I can make you wait for penetration, the more power you’ll be able to hold, the more power you’ll have for yourself.”  He wrung her sex in his hand, gently, as he might wring out a porous sponge.  She gasped, and he groped her once more as if to drive the point home, and then pulled her down to rest beside him.   
  
_He literally, literally has me by the short hairs_ , Sarah thought.  _And he has no short hairs to grab._    
  
The falling sparks began falling more slowly, and they coalesced into floating spheres of parchment-thin flame, a curtain of bubbles and shivering chains enclosing them together under a canopy of gold.  “You understand, of course, that male and female are inadequate terms.  I say male and female because people are more likely to understand sexual energy through their own physiology.  Most of the metaphors in sexual disciplines are bound to that male-female dichotomy.  Most human beings never tap any deeper into the magic implicit in sex, and that’s a shame.  There’s more, and there’s more to sex than male and female bodies."  He sat up on his knees and she followed, making a diamond of sexual space between them in the absence of contact.  "There's so much more,  when you’re coupling with a creature whose body can be anything, feel anything, do anything.  There are so many things we can make together, Sarah, if you’ll let me be your teacher.  So many lovely new things.”     
  
He reached out danced one orb and then another over his fingertips, or exploding them into sudden tongues of flame by flicking them with his finger. “Catch them,” he told her, and laughed when one after another popped into warm and glittering cascades of gold when she tried to do as he did.  
  
“Show me, show me,” she begged him, and he whispered secret words, each a secret thought, into her ear, tickling her delightfully, running his hand from the cleft of her still-wet sex up to her breast.  And when she held the word like a shape and a form inside her mind, she found she could touch the orbs of burning fire.  
  
“You’re good at this,” he said, the flames and smoke momentarily obscuring his face, leaving only his Cheshire cat smile behind.  “You’re so good, Sarah.”  He ran his hands down the side of her naked flanks and settled them against her hips, pulled her spread-eaged into his lap.  “So good.”  Under his guidance, she tilted forward and cried out in sudden and surprised provocation of orgasm as the head of his erect cock tapped against her upthrust nub.  She shuddered and arched involuntarily, her nether-mouth sucking and practically mewling of its own accord to take in what was offered.  
  
“I know what you’re doing,” Sarah gasped.  Every bucking motion of her hips was met with his calculated withdrawal, and his tongue, busy at her breasts, compelled her forward when she was calculating a retreat from this sexual torture.  
  
“What am I doing?” he asked, and hissed in pleasure as a particularly strong advance of hers almost, almost captured him.  
  
“Below us,” Sarah whimpered, wrapping her arms around his neck and leaning against his chest.  Pearls of fire and flame paused in their orbits and throbbed in time with their bodies.  “Below… directly below us.  The club.  The stage.  This place.  It’s the temple.  That's what the ghost knew but couldn't do for you.”  He pulled her higher against him, and she moaned, riding atop him, sliding upon him, but not quite able to devour him, finding indescribable pleasure and infinite longing, wanting the spark of his life in her wet depths.  “I can.  My body is your altar.” she said between gasps as he kissed the breath out of her.  “My pleasure is the consecration.”  
  
“Yes,” Jareth panted against her mouth.  “And what’s my name, Sarah?”  His fingers slid down the sweat of her spine moved between her wide-spread buttocks, and penetrated her vagina from the rear, bringing her off him, bringing the burning wand of his sex to rise unimpeded between them.  “My name?  What’s my name?”  
  
“My _god_!” Sarah wailed, coming again violently, feeling it from the pit of her stomach, shaking in his arms.   
  
“Behold me and tremble,” he said, in a voice so deep it quavered in her bones.   
  
Where a mortal man would have spent in water, Jareth came in a fountain of white-hot flames.  Sparks rolled out from the sweat of his body and set his hair to burning like a torch, like a burning bush that burnt and burnt and wasn’t burnt away.  He arched his neck and the white light seemed to pour from under his eyelids, the beds of his fingernails, the space behind his teeth where the music came from, the music that went on and on.  His arms spread out above her, reached up to touch the sky above them, spreading outward in owl-wings, phoenix-wings, each feather blazing with light.  
  
Somewhere far below them in the old city, a church-bell tolled midnight.  



	15. The Need for Deeper Reflection

 

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**Soundtrack for chapter 15:**  
**Breathe: "Hands to Heaven"**  
**Kate Bush: "Running Up That Hill"**

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_**Author's Note:** It's hard to work completely without revisions or additions when chapters come this quickly: there is additional expositional dialog near the end of this chapter regarding Linda. _

* * *

"Wake up," he told her. She was startled out of her doze by her jeans hitting her in the face. "It's time you went home."

"Mmmph," Sarah replied, pushing clothing and regrets behind. "Iduwanna." At this point she was more than willing to say "fuck it" to Wednesday, and perhaps to the entirety of the rest of the semester, and make double-sure that this lovenest-garret-temple was well and surely consecrated. It was too late to take back anything she'd done even if she did regret it. She didn't. Anyway, her entire body felt like unspooled wire.

"Too bad," he said curtly. "Iduwanna you here." Sarah cracked one eye. He was up, already dressed. Some of his irritation seemed to be directed at the buttons on his cuffs, which didn't seem to want to fasten for him. The night was still pitch-dark, not even the ghost of dawn near the horizon. She'd only dozed for perhaps fifteen, twenty minutes; their mutual effluvia was still sticky but not yet dry. She whipped the sheet back and writhed in full glory before him. He gave her a brief glance and then stared again at his sleeves.

"That's nice," Sarah huffed. "That's just fine. Use me and then kick me out, so long as you get yours."

" _How_ many orgasms did you have?" he asked archly.

She recounted, not numbering the possession among them. "Five," she said prissily.

"And what do you say?" he said to the most important thing in the room, his shirt. He cursed as the tiny buttons slid free from his cuffs a second time.

"Thank you." Sarah slid up from the bed like an ambulatory pudding and came to him. "Let me do that."

It was a strangely intimate moment, helping him to dress. Intimate because she was putting her hands on him, and he was dressed and she was worse than naked in her cum-stained bra. Strange, because the intimacy wasn't sexual. "Not used to clothes?" she asked, when she was done.

"Not ones that need taking off," he agreed, slipping on his jacket. "Be quick and get dressed. I called you a cab. It should be here in the half-hour, but we'll need to wait for it at the end of the street."

She collected her shirt and her sweater and her socks, but couldn't find her panties anywhere, even after searching on her hands and knees underneath the bed. Sarah realized suddenly that he'd taken them as a trophy, and she felt both flattered and aggravated. Jeans were not comfortable without underwear, as she discovered as she put them back on. Wet and dirty jeans that had only had a brief chance to dry were even less comfortable.

"Why'd you bother, then? To wear an actual suit?" Not that it didn't look good. Dear god, he looked positively edible. His trenchcoat was like an oil slick, the open neck of his shirt an invitation to his throat. She got her shoes back on.

"So I'd have something to take _off_ for you," he replied, holding out her coat for her. She slipped it on, and then felt terribly sad.

"This is the part where you're moving too fast," Sarah said, sitting down on the bed. "You're sending me away just when I want to be with you most. Why don't you want me anymore? Why do I have to go?"

His mouth tightened, but then he came to her and sat down on the bed beside her and took her hand in his. He held her hand gently, and he didn't look at her.

"Reasons," he said. "I want to know who I am when I'm not with you. I want to know whether I want you when you're not here. Tonight proved that as much as I plot and plan, I'm still your slave." His left hand, the marriage-finger, was adorned by a single dull bronze ring, and he kept this hand on his lap and turned the twisted metal over and over, looking at it and not her. Once upon a time, it had been the means to enslave him, passed down from Linda to Linda in a neverending chain. Like the lesser genie in Arabian Nights, the ring had given her absolute control over him. Like the wicked queen's slave in the mirror, he had reflected the every desire of his mistress.

Now, apparently without wanting to, he was reflecting her desires as well. For sex, for power, for hidden knowledge. How much space might she need, if she were in his position, to be able to know where she ended and the other began?

She stood up and pulled him up with her, and she hugged him—not erotically, not dependently, but hugged him the way she might hug Toby when he needed comfort after stubbing his toe or hitting his head. "I wish…"

He was as still as a rock in her arms. "What do you wish?" he asked coldly. She realized his coldness was fear.

"I wish I could help you."

"You did help me," he said, relaxing just slightly. "You did everything I asked."

"I don't mean help like that. Not just with the sex or whatever scheme you're cooking up in this place, or letting you win. Not just letting me use you a little less than you use me. I wish you'd let me _help_ you. I wish you'd let me be your friend."

He remained inert, not hugging her back. "You don't want to be my friend. I'm wicked, Sarah. I'm a vicious, nasty creature. You don't know half the things I've done to pretty young things, innocent, ripe girls. Wretched and disgusting things. I would have done them to you, too, if you'd made the least misstep. What right do you have to comfort me? You ought to hate me."

"I don't hate you," she said softly.

"You should," he said, and his arm came up like a puppet's, to press into the small of her back. "Are you too besotted to see the nature of my game? To make you yearn for the pleasure only I'm allowed to give you, and to make you fear the one who gives it? Pushed and pulled between lust and revulsion, power kindled by that friction, no outlet for the fire but through me? That was my plan. It remains my plan."

"Plans can change. _You_ can change," Sarah said. "You more than most. Tell me what you'd like to be, and I'll command you to be it—" She realized as the words came out how terribly, terribly wrong they were.

He didn't shout at her. He only sighed deeply, head buried against her shoulder. "No. Don't _ever_ ask that again." His hands came and clutched at her waist in emotional dependence instead of lust. "Please don't ask. It's as much as I can do just to not rip your clothes off and fuck you senseless right now. To do _your_ will, and not mine."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He raised his head and looked her in the eyes, so vulnerably honest that he seemed an entirely different creature who had sacrificed her fifthly on the orgasmic altar. "I reflect the desires of the witch I'm bound to. That's what frightens me about you, Sarah. Who you might become. What I might become with you. That's why I need you to go now—so I can sort this out. Because as much as you might want to help me or even redeem me, you also want me cruel."

* * *

There hadn't been much more to say after that. He walked her down the narrow slanting streets toward the mouth of the alley.

"You should have let me drive," she told him. "Costs less than a cab."

"Well, I had to come and fetch you anyway," he said. "You weren't answering your phone."

She realized that she'd never turned the ringer back on her phone, and rolled her eyes at herself. "Can't I call you?" she asked, not liking being utterly at his command. "What if I need you?"

"If you need me, summon me with blood and fire. But it had best be an emergency. I've stretched the rules of Concordat and Guest to their limits, and I don't want to risk offending your school spirit over Trivial Pursuit and nookie."

"My school spirit," Sarah said, thinking incredulously of green-and-black-and-gold-colored pep rallies and pennants and scarves and the first joyful horns of the school song. "My school has a spirit?"

"Everything has a spirit," Jareth said nonchalantly, bracing her around the waist as they descended narrow steep steps. "He's been highly amused by your coven, and particularly pleased by the way you clean up after yourself. Spiritually speaking. We know your domestic skills are almost beyond help."

"What's his name?" Sarah asked, feeling as though she ought to have long since been introduced.

"Why, Triptolemus, of course," Jareth said, as if she were being very foolish. "He's an old one. Americanized. Like most of his type, he's a little weird, but he still follows the old paradigms. He takes his responsibilities quite seriously. A very good guardian."

"The school mascot," Sarah said. She could see the lights of the cross-street from the alley, the light of a time and place that was fixed and mundane, and where spirits and human beings didn't play games with each other, Scrabble or otherwise. That world was, of course, the biggest lie there was.

"He's not the mascot, the mascot is _him_. Didn't you ever wonder why you never had to face any dangerous supernatural creatures or work to avoid the hexes and spells of rival witches or fend off the advances of would-be fairy paramours? He protects you. He protects his entire hill. I thought you knew all this. I thought that was why you'd chosen his school."

"Polly chose it," Sarah said, and Jareth practically groaned. "Polly said—"

"Sarah, from now until the end of time, spare me any more 'Polly-said.'" He lit a cigarette. "It was a good choice," he admitted. "But I can see your education hasn't been as thorough as it ought to have been. When you return, make Triptolemus an offering. A bottle of beer, or a sheaf of…" his voice trailed off.

"No," he said. "Oh, no." In the shadows of the murky street, his face was pale. "Sarah, I've changed my mind. Why don't we go back to my place and fuck like weasels? And then in the morning, you can withdraw from school, and we'll go down to the city clerk's office and get married." He put his arms around her and clung to her like she was something that could be taken away from him. It doused any spark of residual ardor in her. "I wish I had penetrated you. I _had_ made you pregnant."

"Like I didn't already tell you no to that!" Sarah hissed, pushing him away. "No, I won't. You missed your chance, and then you decided to send me away. Well, I'm going now. When that cab comes, I'm getting in it! _Jackass_." Ah, fury. Her old friend.

"Listen to me," Jareth said, still intense. "When you return, make an offering to Triptolemus's effigy. Not ripe wheat, and not seed wheat. Use a handful of snow, and pomegranate pips. Let the snow fall from your fingers, eat the pips, and ask his leave for six more weeks with your husband."

"What are you talking about!"

"The Eleusian mysteries," he said, as if that explained everything. "You, not quite my wife and not quite your mother's daughter. Demeter, meeting Triptolemus. It's _your_ school. Why don't you know all this?"

"I haven't chosen a major yet!" Sarah protested. "Talk to me! Tell me what you're freaking out about."

"Narrative patterns. Demigods like Triptolemus are susceptible to them. I've played the role of Hades in seducing you. And you've become Persephone in being seduced." He cursed, rollingly Shakespearean, pulling at the roots of his hair. Sparks flew everywhere. "Don't you understand? When she came out of the Underworld, Triptolemus was the first to greet her. And Demeter was there, and gave him gifts. In the joy of having her daughter brought back to her possession."

"What are you saying?" she asked, beginning to understand. Fury, and now terror.

"I'm saying you should expect a visit from your mother."

Ugly reality finally washed over the blissful pleasure he'd wrapped her in.

"My mother," Sarah said coldly, "Has no magic left. Or has that changed, too?"

Jareth stared down at the wet pavements, as if ashamed, or guilty. "You remember you asked me to look over your stepmother and take care of her?"

"Yes," Sarah said carefully, thinking that this was the sort of thing they should have spoken of from the very beginning tonight. Her fault; lust had dulled her defenses.

"When I went to Irene, it was very obvious to me that she'd been made sick by magic. Malficia. I loosened the curse on her and it rebounded to the caster. That's how it works. It snapped away so quickly I couldn't see where it went, but now I'm willing to make an educated guess."

"It couldn't have been my mother," Sarah said, feeling as if she were falling into a black pit, and Jareth only scruffing at the sides to make her fall further, faster. "She would have needed her magic to make that kind of spell in the first place."

"Exactly," he said, looking up at her through a blue haze of smoke. "This would have been something she put in place before that time. Perhaps years before. Waiting for you, or for me, or for anyone else to do a good thing for the woman who became her rival. Sending a pristine core of refined magic directly back at her, like an emergency hundred-dollar-bill stuffed in the pocket of an old coat, or a bra." He cast the cigarette away into the dark. "She may have something to work with now. She may have gifts to offer Triptolemus, in the role of Demeter, as a mother receiving a daughter back into her keeping. Six weeks or two nights, you could end up belonging to Linda again."

"No!" Sarah said. She could see one set of headlights wavering like a beacon down the cross-street, and knew it was the cab. "She can't. I won't. Let me stay with you. I don't want to see her. I won't go with her!" She realized she had grabbed up his lapels in both hands, and realized how easy it had been, how natural, to follow his lead—to be afraid when he told her to be, to be dependent on him when he told her to be. She had been inches away from doing all that he suggested, just to alleviate a fear that he'd invented for her. Even to her own damnation. "This is a trick," she said coldly, horrified by how easily he'd almost checkmated her.

"I never lie," he said, but she couldn't see his face in the darkness and the rising yellow light of the cab's headlights.

"No, but you tell the truth to suit yourself. You mean to tell me all of this occurred to you just now? That you didn't anticipate this scenario?" She shook her head. "I doubt it. You've had years to make your plans. _Both_ of you. This is crass. I'm disappointed in you, Jareth."

"You the Williams fare?" the cabbie asked from a rolled-down window. Mercifully, it was not the same driver who'd been a silent witness to the make-out session earlier that evening.

"That's me," Sarah said, securing her purse under her arm. She opened the door and prepared to get in.

"I meant what I said tonight," she said. "About wanting to be friends. If you're prepared to apologize to me, meet me at the Old Pumphouse at eight on Thursday night. We'll talk things over on neutral ground." She got inside and shut the door against him. "Triptoleme Hill, please. Swayer Hall lot B."

There was a tapping, as if an owl rapping, rapping at her chamber door. She cracked it just an inch.

"What?" she asked. "Be quick. Like you, I've got to go home and think some things over."

"Don't neglect the offering," he said. "Pomegranates, and snow. You're caught up in the story now, Sarah. Best be proactive." He slipped his fingers in through the crack of the window, and she thought about rolling the window back up and pinching him. But then, that might slow down the cab.

"Your danger is real," he said, and his face was still pale.

She stroked his fingertips with her own and then popped them back outside, one by one. "Goodnight, Jareth," she said, and rolled the window up.

"Get me home please," she told the driver, and clutched her purse tight to her chest.


	16. The Demigod's Advice

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 16  
** **Duran Duran: "Ordinary World"**  
 **Blast! Ensemble: "Simple Gifts/Appalachian Spring"**

* * *

In the predawn dark, when it seemed as if she were the only person awake in a sleeping world, she crept shivering to the statue of Triptolemus standing alone on the quad, holding up a gilded sheaf of wheat like a friendly salute. She had nothing. She had brought him nothing.

"Hello," she said, feeling hopeless and a bit idiotic. "My name is Sarah Williams. I go to school here."

The statue's likeness had obviously been molded in the image of some long-ago dean or city father; the marble face was slightly jowly, the hairline receding, the breadth of his shoulders and the cut of his chest more like those of a bank clerk than a Greek god.

"I should have introduced myself a long time ago," she murmured. "I didn't realize you were here to be introduced to. That was stupid of me." Despite Jareth's rather desperate assertion that Triptolemus was a spirit, she wasn't sure she was doing anything more than talking to herself. And yet, when she looked into the statue's saggy face, she saw a benevolence in his expression that perhaps hadn't quite been there a moment ago.

"I know who you are," she said. "You were there at Eleusis when Persephone came up out of the underworld. Demeter gave you the gift of agriculture for giving her daughter back to her. That's why they call you the Husker. You're the first farmer." In the open cart at Triptolemus's feet were stone sower's bags, labeled TECHNES, GRAMMATA, EPISTIMI. Liberal arts. When the mascot appeared at school functions in the flesh, those bags were full of gold-paper-wrapped chocolate coins, each embossed with the handful of grain—available for purchase at the college bookstore as souvenirs for a dollar per five-chocolate bag—and were tossed to the cheering crowd by whatever youth wore the costume. The school mascot was always generous with his largesse. She hoped the spirit would be as generous to her.

"I feel like Persephone," Sarah said, pulling her coat tighter around herself. "I have a lover who scares me, and a mother who scares me worse. He's trying to force me into a confrontation with her. He wanted me to bring you an offering of pomegranates and snow," she told him, she said, eying the pennies and the desiccated wheat-tips that alumni tended to throw in their on their visits, bought at the college bookstore for a dollar a bunch, cast there for luck, for a wish, for fondness. "So that you might agree to keep me hidden from her, or protect me from her. He hates her and wants her dead. And she wants to own me, body and soul. It's like they're playing a game with each other and I'm… the ball they're playing with." She closed her eyes and saw a crystal being tossed in the air, being wavered back and forth between nimble gloved hands. Inside, herself under glass, in a white dress, helpless and still while her world was turned by others. "I'm tired of being the ball."

She stared at the cold dead ground at the base of the pedestal. "I didn't bring you anything," she finally admitted.

She caught a sigh of something, some echoing words on the still air.

"What was that?" she asked him.

"I said, you brought yourself," the statue repeated.

Sarah was momentarily startled—not by a marble effigy talking back to her, which in her scope of knowledge, was just as normal or as weird as anything else in her experience—but by his voice. He sounded like a slightly sober W. C. Fields, his voice a cultivated New England drawl.

"Wow," Sarah said under her breath. "I have a few questions, if you'll answer them, sir."

"Go right on ahead, Sarah Williams."

"What do I owe you if I get the answers I need?" Sarah asked. She'd learned the hard way never to assume anything was free, where the spirit world was concerned.

The demigod pointed down to the pedestal upon which he stood. "There's some words there, kid. Know what they say?"

She looked at the words, cut an inch deep, brightened with gold paint.

**kalliergeí ti gnósi**

"I'm sorry," Sarah said. "I don't know Greek. It _is_ Greek, right?"

Triptolemus gave an amused sigh. "Don't know Greek? On my campus? Fix that, will you, duckling? Liberal arts used to mean something round here." He sat down on his winged cart, feet dangling over the pedestal, and folded his arms across his knees. "'Kalliergeí ti gnósi' means 'cultivate knowledge.' That's my function. That's why I'm a demigod, and not just some nabob from antiquity's Nebraska. Demeter and Aidoneus didn't pay me off with agriculture. It was a _gift_. A gift from the gods. Free-gotten from them, freely given as I passed it on. All you have to do to propitiate me is take what you reap here and plant it again. Charge nothing, not even at cost, sometimes at a loss." His demeanor would have been completely reassuring if he hadn't also been simultaneously eight feet tall and made of gilded and bronzed marble.

"Can you protect me from both of them?" Sarah asked.

"Not exactly," Triptolemus said sadly. "You seem pretty smart—" the word came out 'smaaaht'—, "you should know that. I've got to follow narrative patterns, same as any other supernatural creature. Phil saw his shadow last week. If you brought me that offering your boyfriend suggested, I could cover you over for about five more weeks. But it also means at the end of that grace period that you'll have to meet your mother and go back to her. You'll be passed back and forth between mama and boyfriend forever, which I'm taking it isn't what you want."

"It's not," Sarah said. "My mother has been giving birth to daughters that she raises for slaughter. Leapfrogging from body to body, the way someone would buy a new car and trade it in when it was out of style. She'll take me, if I let her. I don't want to die. And I don't want to kill her, either. But I'm afraid it'll come to that."

Musing, he fanned himself with his grain-sheaf like a gentleman farmer on an antebellum verandah. "That's Demeter's game. She comes off well in the stories about her, I know, probably because there are too few stories from Olympus where any female creature wins out over the male. But Demeter and Persephone are intricately linked. They're the same creature, Demeter the ripe corn, and Persephone the green, Hecate the Queen Below. Mother begets daughter begets mother, one becomes the other, over and over again. Pomegranates and snow," he mused. "Off-season fruit and snow you'd have to dig up from one of the plow-heaps if you wanted it this time of year. Still. It might work as a temporary hold, if you wanted to go that route. Eventually you'd have to be allowed to go back to him, but maybe not as you were. Strange advice, all told."

"I got the advice from a pretty strange guy," Sarah replied, trying not to think of how completely bizarre this conversation was becoming, how cold she was getting. She crouched down on her heels and pulled her collar up, turning her coat into a little tent for her body.

"I know who you are!" the demigod said in sudden delight. "You're the little witch who's being courted by the fire."

"That'd be him," Sarah sighed.

"Is he too stroppy? Too hot for you to handle?" The demigod gave her an avuncular grin.

"Nope," Sarah said, lying through her chattering teeth.

"And your mother a witch too, I'd expect, and the fire hers before he was yours. I'll never understand why you witches love the fire, knowing how badly it tends to burn you. And that fire courting you—he's a one, Sarah Williams. Plenty of ambition, plenty of strength, and not much patience. I know him, you see."

"What do you know about him?"

"He was willing to let me think he was one of those fae kings, the lingering smell of brimstone from spending time in Hell's suburbs, like the fae do. And when that didn't fly, he pretended to be a bonafide original member of Satan's court, but I put paid to that malarkey. He's truthful, but not honest. He's up to something deep, something I can't quite see. But since I know my name and my place in my story, I don't have power to do much more than forbid him my hill. I don't make enemies of any gods of the underworld. They gave me their gifts, too. That's what they don't tell you in the stories. They gave me the knowledge of how to sow the seed, to bury it deep, to tickle the seed into germination. But it tweren't a gift given for acting the pimp."

"He is a king in his own country," Sarah said. "And I think he's trying to do right by me. Or… he's trying to try? But I don't have much faith in him at this point. He's been taking a lot more than he's been giving, and he hasn't been particularly nice about it, either."

"Hm. His kind, they're parasitic. They'll feed off a witch's power for as long as she has lifeblood in her, but they don't tend to last more than three, maybe four generations. That one—he's a trash-fire, like all the old ones in his mold. They've got a gift for gathering up all the things people have thrown away or forgotten. Objects. Metaphysical concepts. Even stories. And he's older than my story, but he's got no story of his own. He's playing Aidoneus, burning for Persephone, and he'll probably continue until one of you is dead. And then he'll build himself a nesting pyre in your bones."

"Great," Sarah said, feeling depressed. "What should I do? I guess that's my question. And I don't have anyone but you to get good advice from."

"I've got one other job that I never get credit for," Triptolemus said, handing her a chocolate coin, rather the worse for wear from exposure to sun and snow. She took it in surprise. "That's judge over the dead. Every soul is a song, and every soul a singer. It gives testimony when the body has gone. I've seen people come and go in my time, souls assigned to one chorus or another, above, below, and sidewise. Rare occasions, I've seen a spirit as corrupted as your trash-fire achieve a place normally reserved for a living soul. And it's not sin or even love that gives it leave to sing. It's a grace that comes from having a story of its very own. If you can set yon fond fire to burning with his own story, he might find whatever passes for redemption. At the very least, he may learn to stop playing Hades as the villain."

"I'll remember," Sarah said. She clutched the chocolate coin tight in her hand and Triptolemus re-ascended to his cart. It had the nature of a dismissal. She wasn't sure what quite to do, so she gave the school's traditional three-fingered salute, echoing the threefold sheaf of wheat he held upright in his hand. "Thank you."

"Sarah Williams!" the demigod called after her. She turned back. There was the statue, standing in his cart, altogether untoward and normal. But she still heard his voice fading in the darkness just before dawn.

"This school ain't been co-educational for but thirty years. I don't have much personal experience with young women, and witchcraft is a woman's domain. You'll need to talk to a woman about it. Go talk to Emilia Kline. She's the Anthro head. She knows more about witchcraft than I've forgotten."

"Thank you again," Sarah said. "I'll remember. And I'll bring you an offering next time I see you."

"Wheat and candy are traditional," the demigod's voice agreed, as it whispered into nothing.

When she looked back the second time, opening the door to Swayer Hall, the dawn was coming up and framing his laurel-crown with a halo of gold.


	17. Morning Song

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 17:**   
**Eddie Redmayne: "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables"**   
**Ben Howard: "Oats in the Water"**

* * *

_**Author's Note:** At a certain point I became aware that I'd cast Eddie Redmayne as Apolloinaire Vaan Knecht, by way of Marius in  Les Miserables. So that happened. _

* * *

Her door was open. Sarah sighed. All she wanted to do was flop facedown in her bed and lie there for several hours in blissful unconsciousness, but it looked like that wasn't going to happen—not today, and probably not tomorrow. Maybe never again. But then again, she had a pretty good idea of who had come to call at this ungodly hour.

She pushed the door open enough to see Polly in residence, claiming his familiar territory of the window-seat. He was smoking. The window was cracked but the room was rank with it. But what moved her from tired acceptance to outright irritation was the state of the rest of her room. Everything had been turned inside-out. The bed was upturned, the rug rumpled, laundry scattered, and her wardrobe and desk and bookshelf eviscerated. He'd tossed the place. Literally.

"Sarah," he said mildly.

"Polly," she said, trying to stay calm. "I guess you didn't find it, what _ever_ it was you were looking for." Very pointedly, she put her purse up on the surprisingly neat mantel. The empty vase with its cache of glitter and the owl's feather sat untouched, untouched as nothing else seemed to be. In her purse, the box. In the box, the Goblin King's heart. Hers, not anyone else's.

She turned to face him, practically spitting the words. "I thought you had more finesse than this. Even if I was stupid enough to leave the thing behind, there's no way you could ever put your hands on it without it being given to you. It's got too much import. So what _were_ you looking for? Some hairs from my brush? Fingernail clippings? Tough luck. I've been flushing those for years now." She wrinkled her nose at the stink that clung to the room. "And put that thing out. It reeks."

Polly obliged, tossing the butt out the window. "Nice to see you too, Sarah." He looked her up and down. "You're looking bouncy. Practically radiant. Showed you a good first time, did he?"

"Get out!" Sarah shouted, putting all the force of her voice into the command.

"Shan't, thanks," Polly said, crossing his legs. "I'd like you to _listen to me_ ," he said, using the voice on his own behalf. Sarah clutched her hair in frustration. He'd done exactly what he'd taught her to do in magical combat with a more formidable witch: bent back with the magical force directed at him and then sent it back to his opponent threefold. He called it the rubberband. Sarah called it cheating. She could claw through the command on a good day without even thinking, but today wasn't a good day.

"I'm listening," she said. "Since I don't have a choice. Make it quick."

"It wasn't me," he said, gesturing at the topsy-turvy room.

"Likely story," Sarah scoffed, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Scene of the crime and all."

"For fuck's sake, Sarah. Like I'd toss your room and then sit here and wait for you to get back just to let you know I didn't do it. It's not like I wouldn't rather be sleeping, too." His burned face was harsh and aggrieved, and against her better judgement, Sarah softened.

"I believe you," she said. "Any idea who it might have been?"

"A few," he said. "It doesn't really matter. What matters is whether or not they got what they were looking for. Not just your things. Mine. Like that lock of hair I gave you back when I thought you'd make a decent leader of the coven. My pledge. Was _that_ taken?"

"No," Sarah said with absolute certainty.

"I'd like it back, then," he said grimly. "I don't think you're safe anymore." And his body relaxed from a deep tension he'd been holding. He hid his face in his hands and gasped out a deep sigh, like the prelude to tears. With a stab of guilt, Sarah realized that he didn't mean that she herself wasn't protected from harm—though that was certainly true—but that he didn't trust her anymore to hold on to such a powerful personal talisman.

What stunned her was that he had reason to fear her. She'd forced him to break a promise to her, and then she'd taken up with a demon who'd disfigured him out of idle pique. He was right; he couldn't trust her anymore.

"Aw, geez," Sarah said, a little more whiny and less comforting than she'd meant to be. She opened her fridge and poured him a dram of the cheap vodka and put it in his hand. If in doubt, drink, that was the way lately. "Wait here. I'll be right back." She grabbed her electric teapot and ran to the bathroom. As the teapot filled, she opened a loose metal panel that gave access to the pipes and gauges, reached deep into the dark space against the wall, and drew out a ziplock that she'd duct-taped inside the wall at the beginning of the school year. For a fearsome moment, her hands couldn't grasp it in the dark. But then it was there, slightly damp and grimy but otherwise intact. She brought bag and teapot with her and set the latter to boil. Polly hadn't moved, but his glass had been emptied.

"Here," she said, tossing him the baggie. "Safe as houses. It's yours now."

He looked at the bag, unwrapped it from its silver tape cocoon, and reached inside. He pulled out a lock of ash-blond hair tied with a white ribbon. He clutched it in his hand, tightly as a child with a beloved toy, and began to cry.

Sarah tried not to notice, and Polly was decorous in his anguish. As the water heated, she poured in three packets of cherry-berry instant oatmeal. If men at your window are in pain, feed them. Sarah shook her head at her own instincts, but when the oatmeal had reached an acceptable consistency, she handed him the whole pot and a spoon. And Polly ate.

"I can deal with a lot of things," Sarah murmured, "But not seeing you weak, Apollonaire Vaan Knect. Eat that, and talk to me. Like you said, I'm listening."

Polly filled himself on gruel and Sarah didn't scruple at manners to grab her own spoon get her share. Dinner had been forever ago.

"The situation with my mother and father is all kinds of fucked." He scrubbed his tears away with his sleeve and let out an unexpected belch. They're—well, I don't think it could be called _well_ , but they're certainly _alive_. Thanks to you." He fiddled with his pack of cigarettes again as he tucked the lock of hair away in an inner pocket, and Sarah scowled.

"Go ahead," she said in resignation, and Polly commenced to puffing. "What's wrong with them?"

"Did you know I had an older sister?" Polly asked out of nowhere. "Diane. She's been dead almost longer than I've been alive. It was a good marriage my parents had. Strong. Unusual. I guess any marriage between a witch and a male witch would be unusual, but they married for love. Two witches, two familiars, and planning on two children, a boy for father's line and a girl for mother's. But at her Trial, she died."

"I'm sorry," Sarah said softly, but Polly waved off her condolences and gave her an intense look.

"She made the choice you did. She took my mother's familiar with her. Lupa. And Diane died, and Lupa escaped. I don't think the two things are coincidental."

"Is that why you hate them so much?" Sarah asked. "The demons? Because you think one killed your sister?"

"Part of it," Polly said uncertainly. "Definitely part. I don't just suspect Lupa. I know it was responsible. I know it in my bones. The question for me is…" he trailed off. "The rest of the coven pretended to think Diane's death was an accident, one of the things that sometimes happen at Trials. But my parents knew better. They'd been competing with your mother for years for leadership. A dead heir made them retreat and consolidate their position. I grew up on that. Three times a day, breakfast lunch and dinner, 'Remember, Apollonaire, the Queen murdered your sister and she'll kill you too if you're unready, so eat your vegetables and study hard today." He took a long drag on his cigarette and let out a series of limp smoke-rings. "I still believe your mother had my sister killed. To hurt my parents. And it did. And I think her demon—your demon now—helped her do it."

He canted his eyes upward, not looking at her. "My parents have been burnt clean out of magic. Burnt almost out of their minds. It's like they're catatonic. But yesterday... well, I guess it's two days ago at this point, my mother looked at me and called me by my sister's name." He looked back at her, straight in the face. "And my father put his hand on her, and he was like an old, old man who'd forgotten everything else at the end of his life except for the sound of his wife's voice, and he said to her, "No, it's Apollonaire." Polly closed his eyes and two more inadvertent tears flowed down his cheeks. "I know I can heal them. I can bring them back. But I'll have to be with them, every day. They… they need me. So I'm withdrawing from school. I'm going to go pack up my shit today. I'm going home."

"I can talk to Jareth," Sarah said quietly. "Make him keep his part of the bargain." She put a hand on Polly's shoulder and he shoved it away, not too roughly.

"Don't you get it?" he said, shivering in his coat and the open draft of the window. "That thing _is_ keeping its half of the deal, so long as I'm keeping mine. The choice isn't just letting you go to it, stupid and dangerous as that is. It's letting you stay with it and not being here to protect you. It's a choice between you, who doesn't seem to need me so much, and my parents, who _do_."

"You really think you can bring them back?" Sarah asked.

"I do," Polly said, flicking his cigarette out the window. "So I'm out. One little two little three little Indians, now down to two. Or maybe just one. Have you talked to Nan yet?"

"Not yet," Sarah admitted, as Polly closed the window and got down from the window-seat.

"Get on that," Polly said angrily. "All of these bargains from the demon you're fucking seem to be about breaking this coven. Talk to Nan before you're completely isolated."

"I will," Sarah said.

The radiator clanked and groaned as it warmed the cold room, and when she put her hand in her coat-pocket, she rediscovered the chocolate coin that the demigod had given her. She crunched it between her fingers, breaking it into thirds. "Here," she said, giving him his wedge. She took the second, and wrapped the third back in the gold foil. "For Nan," Sarah said. "A gift from the god. Triptolemus. I just spoke to him. Polly, don't quit school. Get a leave of absence for the rest of the semester. And then come back. This doesn't have to be the end of our coven. It's just… a passing thing, until I can make a plan."

He stared down at the chocolate in his hand, and then put it on his tongue, and ate. Sarah did the same. "You have my number?" he asked her.

"Yes," Sarah said, feeling sad. "Can't you just—"

"No," Polly said shortly. He raised his arms parallel to his face and with a few complicated gestures, made her room snap itself back into its customary order.

"I wish I knew how to do that," Sarah said wistfully.

"No, you don't," Polly said. "You wouldn't want to pay the price I paid to learn it. Or rather… you do, but you shouldn't." He opened the door, and then paused on the threshold. "At our Trial? Proposing marriage was my idea," he said softly. "It might have poured some oil on troubled waters between our houses. We would have married, eventually. Maybe not in three years or even five, but we would have. I was hoping… I had hoped…" he shook his head. "It would have been a good marriage. That's another thing that's never going to be now." He looked over his shoulder at her, with the fair side of his face. "Jareth is going to destroy you unless you destroy him."

"It doesn't have to be that way," Sarah whispered.

"Nope. But that's the way it is." He settled his coat square against his shoulders and turned to go.

"Polly," Sarah said, desperate not to have him leave like this. "Watch out for my mother. She might have something cooking. Don't trust her."

"I won't," he said decisively, speaking out into the hallway. He turned back one last time. "You know, I think I'll take your advice. About leave. That way, I can come back. Say, on the weekends sometime. This place has the nicest chocolate I've ever had." He smiled. "Remember what I said. Fix whatever's gone wrong between you and Nan. Bye, Sarah."

He bounced down the stairs, whistling. She heard the creaking of the outer door, and heard his whistling join the dawn chorus of birds. And Sarah tossed her clothing to the four winds and huddled in the center of her cold bed, and wondered how many days as difficult as this one she'd have to look forward to on the path she'd chosen.


	18. Alma Mater

 

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 18:**  
This Mortal Coil: "Meniscus"  
The Cars: "Drive"

* * *

_**Author's Note:** Thanks to Pika-La-Cynique's Girls Next Door over at DeviantArt, I am reading the Dresden Files books for the very first time. I love it, but I sort of hate it, because everything Jim Butcher says on the nature of magical rules and beings is pretty much perfect, and everything I do is not-perfect. And yet, life goes on._

* * *

Sarah woke after two hours' sleep, feeling more refreshed and ready for the day than she had any right to do. And it was a perfect day. Her favorite clothes were folded and ready for her at the very top of the laundry basket, and her books and notebooks for class ready to go in her bag. She attended all three classes, answered all the questions posed with brilliance and poise, sparked the admiration and interest of both professors and peers, and ate a hearty but well-balanced and nutritious lunch. Polly and Nan joined her. "I think you're cool," Nan said, smiling at her shyly. "Everything you do is perfect." And Polly gave her a thumbs-up. His face was completely unburnt. "It's because you're so wonderful," he told her. "Everybody knows it. Even your mother."

"I love you," Linda said, from where she sat at the table with them. Her mother was young and beautiful. "I admire you so much, darling. And I love what you've done with Jareth. You're so clever. You're such a wonderful Queen. You're my superior in every way."

Sarah kept eating. No matter how much she ate, she was still hungry. And she had to pee. She didn't want to go to the bathroom, though, because she knew they would all start talking about her behind her back. As the cramping of her bladder got more insistent, she ate more. She was starving.

"Let me help you," her mother informed her, picking her up and cuddling her against her naked breast. She had become very small, and with relief she understood that she was an infant. She babbled some nonsense and the nipple was against her mouth, expressing sweet milk. "My hungry baby," her mother cooed, and began the first bars of a lullaby that called up an ancient memory of her infancy. "Drink."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Jareth's voice echoed in the room. "She'll eat you up."

Her mother's voice continued to sing, softly to her. Boughs were breaking, babies were falling. Fire crackled round about her, but Linda didn't notice.

"I love you, my baby  
You know I do,  
Half of my heart  
is inside of you."

With a shock, it suddenly occurred to Sarah that she was dreaming.

Sarah spat out the milk and bit the breast that smothered her. "No!" she shouted, trying to struggle away. "I won't be you! I won't!"

And she woke up, so grateful that it had been a dream that she hugged the blankets that had tangled around her. And she got up, and she used the bathroom, and she tore into the scattered remnants of the cheese and fruit, ravenous. The clock confirmed what the growing darkness in the windows told her. 5 PM. She had slept the entire day away.

Sarah swore.

And then she remembered the content of her dream and her anger was smothered in aching and icy fear. It wasn't the fear of a danger nearly avoided. It was the fear that a traveler might see on a night-dark path through a lonely wood, and dawn coming up and realizing the level path had been on the edge of an unseen precipice for miles and miles and miles, and only sheer happenstance had prevented a fall.

Sarah felt sick. She pinched her upper lip until the nausea passed.

Who was she? Was she her mother, playing around with people's thoughts, people's lives, as if she was the only one who counted? Jareth certainly couldn't tell her—he'd said as much, that there were moments when he couldn't differentiate between them both. Polly and Nan couldn't tell her—they had never known her in any other context but one of leadership and power, with Jareth at her left hand. And she couldn't even tell herself—the little witchery she had for herself was addictive, and all three of the people closest to her needed her to be an addict.

So who could tell her who she was?

Trembling, hungry, hurting, she picked up the phone and called home, hoping, begging whatever circumstances or happenstance or god arranged such things that she'd be able to talk to the one person who could give her an objective answer.

"Hello," the voice on the line answered. Sarah sagged with relief.

"Irene?" Sarah asked in a trembling voice.

"Sarah!" Irene's voice replied with the genteel exasperation that was a hallmark of all of their interactions since the dawn of time. "Would you like to talk to Robert?" Her voice dimmed on the final few words, as if she were already passing the conversation over.

"No!" Sarah said loudly. "Irene, I need to talk to _you_."

"I need to start dinner," Irene said, but her voice became louder, as if taking up the phone closer.

"Please," Sarah said, using the word that, until four years ago, had never ever bothered to employ with her stepmother. "It's really, _really_ important."

Sarah could almost see Irene, in her mind's eye, standing in the kitchen with the long-corded phone against her ear, looking at the fridge, mentally ticking over what was in it and what food could be made with it, impatiently waiting for her aggravating stepdaughter to rush through whatever favor or buttering-up needed to be done so she might get on with the business at hand. But she heard a quiet sigh from Irene, and knew that she was sitting at the kitchen table, occupying her hands with her grocery-list tablet and pen as she always did when she was engaged with family discussions, and Irene said, "I don't feel like cooking anyway. I'll order a pizza instead."

"Thank you," Sarah said gratefully, using the second-most-unused phrase in the history of their relationship.

"What's on your mind?"

"Irene, who am I?" Sarah asked.

There was a long enough silence to make Sarah nervous.

"Sarah," Irene said, in her most brittle, defensive tone. "Are you sober?"

"As a judge," Sarah said. "Yes."

Irene sighed, and some of the refusal came away from her. "I wouldn't blame you if you weren't, you know. I went to college, too. And that was the sixties. But this isn't the type of conversation that stays on point if one of the participants is high."

"Not high, not drunk," Sarah said. "Cross my heart. Can you answer the question for me? Who am I? What kind of person am I?"

"Well, now I might need a drink. You're twenty years old, Sarah. That's old enough for me to tell you what I think, and for you to be diplomatic about what I tell you." Irene breathed slightly heavily as she stood up, and Sarah could see her pacing, pacing around the kitchen, trailing the tether of the extra-long phone cord in her wake.

"Tell me, please," Sarah said.

"You're my stepdaughter. I had to raise you during your teens, and you were completely cruel to me at every opportunity. You wanted your real mother, and you let me know, every day, what a completely inadequate understudy I was. And things only got worse when your brother was born. You were headstrong, willful, unkind, thoughtless, and selfish. You made my life hell."

Sarah gasped in quiet surprise at how much the answer hurt her. It was though she had been punched in the belly by a bunny rabbit.

"But," Irene continued, the voice on the line almost smothered by the receiver, as if Irene were leaning over it, pressing her face against it, "I deserved it. Your father was a brand-new divorce when I met him, and I wanted him. And I got pregnant with your baby brother on purpose so that he would marry me. You weren't part of my considerations. I suppose I'd blithely assumed I could pack you off to your mother, or keep you separate from my life with your father. I couldn't. I was mean and jealous enough to compete for Robert's love with his daughter, a thirteen-year-old girl. You treated me like a wicked stepmother. And you were right. I was a wicked stepmother. It was textbook. And I hated the fact that, young as you were, you were able to see right through me. I disliked you severely." She felt Irene straighten, lean against a wall or a refrigerator. "Why are you asking me this now?"

"I'm worried that I'm becoming my mother," Sarah said dully, seeing an ugly repetitive future spread out before her. And then, like that, the path vanished as Irene laughed. "What?" Sarah said.

"You're nothing like your mother," Irene said, still chuckling. "You only tried to be. It was like watching a kitten trying to be a snake with you, even at your worst. Don't get me wrong, Sarah. You learned a few lessons from her by emulation, particularly in how to manipulate people, but you've always been a fundamentally honest person. Your performances were always amateur, compared to Linda's."

"But who am I?" Sarah insisted, feeling aggrieved and unanswered.

"Underneath all that clutter and all those bad lessons? You're a human being, with the potential to do good _or_ evil. I don't know if you're a good person. I don't know if I'm a good person. I just know that a good intention or a few bad words mean nothing without the context that follows. And you—you don't always think before you act, and you need to get into trouble before you get out of it. But when you've put people in danger, you do your best to take responsibility for what you've done."

Sarah realized that she had curled herself around the phone, like fruit-flesh around a peach-stone. The Labyrinth. Sarah had told her father about the Labyrinth three years ago, in the car ride home from NYC, omitting no details, good or bad or embarrassing, about how she'd gotten there and how she'd gotten out. She'd told Irene too, feeling it was only a mother's due to know how her wicked stepdaughter had almost cost her her baby. Irene had listened in serenity, and had taken the visible proofs of Sarah's power in stride, and never mentioned it again. But on the phone now, Sarah realized that the story hadn't just glossed over Irene's smooth Aqua-Net persona. The story had sunk in, she had taken it seriously, and she hadn't kicked Sarah summarily out of the house, as anyone less brave and more selfish might have done.

"What I do know about you is that once you've set your mind on a goal, you're completely committed to it. What kind of person are you? You _know_ , Sarah. Just stop and look at your goals. If you're being responsible and cleaning up whatever mess you've made that obviously prompted this phone call, then you're yourself. If you're hoping _other_ people will fix whatever it is you've broken, then you're not. But never think you're Linda. Linda was never one to count the cost of anything she did to anyone else. She acted as though she were the only person in the entire world."

Irene sighed again, as if in physical pain. And Sarah was reminded, in a sudden rage that made her forget her own fear, that her cancer that had been cut and burned away, then revived, and then vanished, was all Linda's fault.

"You've had to pay for my mother's bullshit," Sarah said. "Irene, you've had to pay for years. I'm sorry I wasn't a better daughter to you. You deserved better."

Irene was silent again for a long time, and Sarah had the feeling she might be crying.

"I'm so tired," she whispered over the line. "Sometimes it takes all the strength I have just to get out of bed and dress myself. This has been the first week in almost a year where I've felt anything close to normal. Sarah, if anything happens to me, I want you to be responsible for Toby. He'll need a mother. You're old enough to be one to him. And you're the one I want for him. Just promise you won't make the same mistakes twice. Not with him."

"You don't need to worry about that," Sarah said, confidently, willing it to be true whether or not Jareth had finished the job, whether or not Linda had a contingency plan for other outrageous and indifferent cruelties for the woman who had supplanted her. "The reason you feel better is because the cancer is gone. You're going to live a long, long time. You're going to meet your grandchildren. I promise."

"Strange, Sarah. I think I actually believe you," Irene said, snuffling a bit, and then blowing her nose aside the phone. "You can always come home, Sarah," she said. "Remember that. This will always be your home. Wherever Robert or Toby or I am. We love you."

"I love you too," Sarah said, feeling the words encompass Irene within the circle of her father and her baby brother, the circle of unconditional love. "I'm going to be okay," she said, suddenly feeling lighter. "I just have some work to do here. Maybe next month, I'll come and see you?"

"Your bedroom is the same as it was," Irene said, and Sarah could feel the sly smile on Irene's face. "It's no problem. Do you want to talk to your father, or Toby?"

"I do," Sarah said, thinking with relish about the unconditional—and enabling—love the men in her family had always given her, "but I don't have time. I have some friends who are in trouble, and I put them there. I owe it to them to clean up my mess."

"All right then. We'll see you next weekend, though, Sarah. I want to make sure you're all right," Irene said, with a small dog's obstinance.

"Thank you, Irene," Sarah said. "I'm not all right, but I think I'm going to be."

They said their goodbyes cheerfully, and Sarah sat for a long time with the phone in her lap, thinking.

She had to find a way to draw loose the malficia her mother had set upon her soul. And she believed the way to untangle it began with reaching out to Nan. Sarah clicked the tongue of the phone several times before she got up enough courage to dial her friend's number, hoping it wasn't too late.


	19. Girls' Night In

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 19:**   
**MGMT: "Kids"**   
**Orbital: "Halcyon & On & On"**

* * *

_**Author's Note:** The role of Prickpetal will be played tonight by an endomorphic Baby Groot._

* * *

Nan hung up on her the moment Sarah said hello, so she rethought her diplomatic negotiations and dropped by the cafeteria at the student union on her way to her dorm. Nan shared Sarah's opinion of snacks (always good) and offerings of food seemed in order. She paid for two to-go box dinners, a tuna melt with pickles and onion with a side of potato salad for herself, and a fried egg sandwich with French fries for Nan. She paid for the food with her very last ten-dollar bill.

"I need a job," Sarah muttered to herself. She had a fifty-dollar-a-week allowance from her father, and she was just now beginning to see what bullshit it was to take that money without thinking where it came from. She'd taken that money for granted. It would have to stop. She'd have to find some other way.

She walked across campus and knocked at Nan's door, boxes stacked atop one arm, still cold from where the evening rain had battered and buffeted her. In this weather, an umbrella was pointless. "Nan!" Sarah said. "Please open up. I'm here to apologize."

There was no answer, but the sound of grinding lilting dance music became slightly louder, as if trying to drown out her voice.

Sarah knocked again. "Nan! I brought food."

The volume of the music lowered after a few seconds, and the door opened a slit.

"What's the magic word?" Nan said, in the form of one baleful bloodshot eye.

"Please," Sarah said, wondering if she'd be setting a personal best for that word's use in twenty-four hours. The hell of it was, it had been sincerely said, every time.

"Wrong," Nan said. "The magic word is obviously 'abracadabra.' Or 'a-la-peanut-butter-sandwiches.'" But she opened her door and let Sarah come in. She even gave Sarah a towel, to keep her from dripping on her belongings.

Nan's room, dear God. She shuddered to think what Jareth might say about it, considering how he'd carped about the state of her own room. Suffice to say the interior was more of a textile nest than anything resembling a human habitation, and most of it smeared with paint and glue and food-crumbs. The only place within that had even a semblance of order was the hanging bookshelf where her boombox and stacks of tapes resided, alongside a tiny decorative flowerpot where Prickpetal drooped, sleeping. Nan cleared a spot for herself atop her bed, and offered Sarah her desk-chair, which she sat in, uncaring of any combination of art supplies, dirty laundry, clean laundry, pillows or tapestries, so long as they didn't cut into her posterior.

"Drinks?" Nan asked, already almost finished with half of her sandwich. Sarah pulled forth a bottle of Pellegrino from one pocket and gave it to her. Forks and napkins came from the other pocket.

"So," Nan said, uncapping the bottle and downing nearly half of it in one go. "Polly's gone."

"Yes," Sarah said carefully, using more delicate table manners.

Nan powered through her fries and the rest of her sandwich like a professional competitive eater. "And you're a bitch." The accusation lost some of its impact due to her distended esophagus.

Sarah sighed and picked at her potato salad. "Yes."

"And the Goblin King is a monster who's holding my sisters and mum hostage, and you still ran off to sell your soul to him for bargain basement prices." This last accusation had the nature of a question.

"Pretty much yes," Sarah said. She couldn't look Nan in the face. She studied her dinner instead, nibbling at it daintily. She heard the swig of the bottle. She wondered if Nan would be inclined to brain her with it when she was done drinking.

"So not just a bitch, but a stupid, selfish bitch, right?"

"Right," Sarah whispered.

"You say it," Nan hissed. "Say it out loud. Say 'I'm a stupid selfish bitch.'"

Sarah opened her mouth, miserable and humbled enough to blithely agree, and surprised herself by looking up into Nan's furious face and saying instead, "No."

Nan only looked slightly surprised.

"Words have power," Sarah said. "I'll cop to being in the wrong. I'll admit to my mistakes. But I won't name myself bad things. Not just to make you feel better, Nan. Even if you are right." She scrubbed at her face with her napkin, done with dinner though it was only half-eaten. "I think that's how I got into this situation in the first place. This bad situation. Speaking without thinking, doing what other people expect. Do you want me to give you the 4-1-1, or do you want to kick me out right now?"

Nan leaned back on her arms. "Talk first. Then maybe a kick."

Sarah took a breath, and then began a recital of all the events that had occurred between breakfast on Sunday to the current moment, only glossing over some of the more salacious details. Her blush gave enough away. When she came to the part about Triptolemus, she handed Nan her piece of chocolate. Bemused, Nan ate. Sarah took it as a good omen.

"So," Nan said when she'd finished. "Jareth may or may not be holding my family hostage against your good behavior. And you made that bargain with him so you could find out more."

"It's not the only reason," Sarah said, not able to look her friend in the face.

"It's good enough for me not to totally hate you. Meanwhile you're terrified that your mother could still get all up inside you, because she's hexed your stepmother and the magic may have rebounded to her when you had Jareth heal her. And her final curse on you may be poking holes in your conscience and Jareth's presence seems to just be making the problem worse." She leaned over, opened a desk-drawer, and began to pack weed into a glass pipe. "Oh, and there's almost nothing that to be done about that except to align with her or with him, because he tells you so. And if you dare to try to control him with your birthright gift, he'll leave and take his protection, the hot sex, and the after-hours magic tutoring with him, and you don't have the coven to fall back on anymore. That about the shape of things?"

"I… guess so," Sarah said, feeling depressed at the analysis.

"He's playin' you, sister," Nan said, voice stifled above a deep throatful of smoke. She passed the pipe and the lighter to Sarah, who turned it down with a wave of her hand.

"I agree. So what should I do?"

"You're asking me _now_?" Nan's outrage was tempered by lungfuls of drug. "When have you ever asked my opinion on anything? But when you remember you need me, here you are. Jesus, you're like a bad boyfriend. You're the worst, Sarah. You really are."

"Yeah," Sarah agreed. "But again, what do I do? Should I break the deal I have going with him?"

"Good luck," Nan said derisively. "Witches can't break a promise. Not to each other, and certainly not to their familiars. You'll have to ride this out. Emphasis _ride_."

Nan's electric alarm clock began to blare, slightly off-beat to the music thrumming from her cassette player. "Hold that thought. It's wake-up time." She put her drugs away with one last lingering inhale. She climbed nimbly from bed to desktop, switching the alarm off with one toe and the music with one finger, and then faced the little not-quite-rose in its little pot on the bookshelf on the wall, and blew a stream of smoke over him as she whistled a gentle note. "Good evening, my love," Nan said, in the type of voice a mother would use with a very small child. "Did you have a good sleep?"

Prickpetal stretched his stick-limbs and opened his beady little eyes, and chirped once, softly.

"Hungry?"

The little familiar chirped again, in tones that seemed to indicate the negative.

"Do you want story-time now?"

"Should I go?" Sarah asked warily.

"No," Nan said, still in that same dulcet tone. "You can stay. Just be quiet." Nan tilted her head forward and the rose clambered into the thicket of her hair. From the second shelf, she pulled out a botany textbook and a tattered-looking children's book, the type bound in cloth and flatboard. She read four pages about plant development to the eagerly interested and attentive creature: monocots, dicots, sepals—it was all Greek to Sarah. And then she opened the other book, which remained flat due to either an incredibly supple or a broken spine, put the demon down upon it, and turned back to Sarah. The book was the size of a mattress to the tiny creature, but it walked confidently up the page to the top of the chapter. There was an illustration in black and white of a pretty young peasant woman standing next to a prince wearing a crown of living flowers. "Felicia and Her Pot of Pinks," Prickpetal squeaked in a voice so little it was barely discernable as one. And it began to read, sidestepping left to right and down and back again, clearly entertained by either the story or the process of reading aloud, or by the dance it had to do, or the singsong cadence of a young student first learning how to speak, or perhaps all of these things together.

"We have story time every day," Nan said, crossing her arms across her chest and daring Sarah to say anything against it.

"Why?" Sarah asked, baffled.

"Because it's what my mother would do if she were here. Sarah, for f—for heck's sake," Nan said, darting her eyes over at Prickpetal, who seemed to be paying them no mind, "It's because the Bullens have always had an eye on the future. We're not like your mom. We live a natural span and we die." She nodded at Prickpetal. " _They_ don't. I'm not going to turn Prickpetal into a monster. I want him to turn out a prince. So that if I'm lucky enough to have descendants, or if some other family line inherits him, they won't get done dirty by a resentful demon. So they won't turn out like Bootis. Or Jareth."

"Huh," Sarah said, not fully convinced.

"Polly ever tell you how he mastered the Movement Wonder before he turned thirteen?" Nan asked in a dubious tone of voice. "Bootis took his payment out of Polly's ass. And you don't even want to _know_ how the Vaan Knechts make their blood tithe. It involves papercuts. On the—"

"Nope," Sarah said, putting her hands over her ears. "You're right, I don't want to know."

"Explains a lot about Polly's attitude toward his family familiar, doesn't it? I'll bet you dollars to donuts that while he's collected whatever talisman controls Bootis, he hasn't so much as touched it with his bare skin, much less summoned its demon for a private one-on-one. He's afraid of them. All of them. Except I'm making Prickpetal someone who won't be an evil hump. For Bootis? Probably _way_ too late."

"But you don't think it's too late for Jareth," Sarah said softly.

Nan turned her face aside.

"That's why you wanted to get your hands on his… valentine. You thought you could fix him? Nan?"

"I don't know," Nan said. "Prickpetal went with the rest of them, when the familiars rebelled against the coven. That night, when he came back to me, he looked just like that handsome prince," Nan said, jutting her chin over at the book where the little familiar was struggling bodily to turn over the page, like a toddler attempting to make a bed with over-starched sheets. The handsome prince's smile was all for the pretty young woman, and his flower-crown seemed to nod blithely over his smiling face as the page turned. "I got a look at what he could be, or what he will be, maybe a thousand years from now. But all he did was hold my hand and cry like a kid who had been returned to Mom after getting lost in a mall. Or a five-year-old dropped at his doorstep after a day of too-rough horseplay with the big kids. I promised I'd take care of him, that night. For the rest of my life. And what's that promise worth if I let the Goblin King do whatever he wants with us?"

"Right," Sarah said. "It had absolutely nothing to do with finding him sexy, and above the age of consent."

"I'm only _human_ , Sarah. Damn. Those pants." Sarah snorted, and Nan continued. "And he did save my life once. You did, too. I thought maybe… maybe I could return the favor."

"It wouldn't have worked," Sarah said with certainty.

"Because I'm shit at witchcraft," Nan said, a bit petulantly.

"You're not," Sarah insisted. "No. It wouldn't have worked because it's not your mess. It's mine. Or more precisely, it's my mother's mess, and I'm going to have to clean it up."

"Face off against your mother, maintain your soul against the Goblin King, and correct your spiritual course," Nan huffed. "Just how do you think you're going to manage that?

"And they lived happily ever after," Prickpetal peeped.

Sarah looked over at the tiny creature and remembered Jareth's words: " _There are a thousand thousand stories of us, and in one of those stories, I love you."_

"I think I know a way," Sarah said wonderingly. And the beginnings of a plan, like the beginnings of a story, folded out all around her.


	20. Confessions

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 20:  
**

**Timber Timbre: "Magic Arrow"**   
**Puddles Pity Party: "I Want You to Want Me"  
**

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_**Author's Note:** I have just discovered Puddles Pity Party, who is like the fleshly ghost incarnation of Major Tom a la "Ashes to Ashes." He's so beautiful he makes me cry. Check out his channel. Also, sorry for how long it took for this update. The characters keep wanting to have interesting sex instead of important conversations. And speaking of important conversations, J &S are in the middle of a date over at Girls Next Door by Pika-la-Cynique on DeviantArt. I think Sarah has the advantage in that story, though. Either way, an important piece of GK's anatomy is in Sarah's purse.  
_

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The Old Pumphouse was the type of institution that could only hope to exist in a college town, an eclectic mixture of coffeehouse, secondhand books and music store, and poetry slam venue. Tonight, luckily, was not a poetry night. Sarah didn't think she had the stomach for anything remotely socially conscious.

She found an unoccupied table somewhat deep inside the room and put her purse and coat down with relief. The weight of the demon's valentine, physical or psychological, was growing greater, and her shoulder ached from carrying it. She only had to check her watch once, before Jareth showed up, precisely on time. He made a show of scanning the room even though Sarah could feel the intensity of his awareness focused on her. He was carrying a tissue-paper-wrapped bouquet of flowers as if it were a scepter, framed out against the lush blackness of his plastic trenchcoat in a splash of clean color.

"These are for you," he murmured, holding them out to her, tapping her on the shoulder with them, pinning her down with them so that she couldn't stand up.

"Thank you," Sarah said, grasping the little bouquet with both hands and looking at it as he pulled a chair out for himself. Fresh green ferns, white daffodils, bleeding-hearts, tiny calla lilies, burritoed as if babies, all the succulently water-laden and sweet flowers of spring.

She looked at Jareth over the bouquet as she inhaled their sweet, clean scent. His rubberized coat squeaked as he folded it over his arm and set it to rest with hers. Although some part of her had perhaps hoped he would be wearing some ridiculous walking-sex costume, his clothing was deceptively normal. Plaid high-waisted pants from half a leisure suit, a t-shirt with the Tootsie-Roll owl, and a white oxford shirt and plaid flannel shirt over that, all in shades of beige and grey and washed-out tints of color. Even his hair was subdued, stuffed back into a slouching blue cap, the few escaping tendrils like a scarecrow's, a corpse's canebreak. As far as the local dress code went, he blended right in. And he looked tired.

Seeing him at a disadvantage, Sarah decided to show no mercy. "Is that a pomegranate in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

Jareth grimaced. "Both, actually," he said, and pulled a ripe fruit from his capacious trouser-pocket and set it on the table with a thump.

Sarah gave the red-gold fruit a look of towering scorn. "I don't need that."

"Then you've already taken care of the necessary offering?" Jareth inquired, still not sitting, still standing at attention before the table which seemed to be her ground.

"No," Sarah said. "I haven't, and I won't. And unless the flowers are by way of apology, I'm not taking them either. You know why." She stared up at him fiercely.

He sighed and drummed his fingers on the chair-back. "You were much easier to manipulate just a few years ago," he said.

"Is that an admission of guilt?" Sarah asked him.

His upper lip curled in a sneer; he bit his lower lip in uneasiness. Sarah just waited.

"Yes," he finally said. And then, much quieter, "I'm sorry." Even quieter than that, a coda she might not have heard but that her whole attention was focused on his mouth, "I'm sorry for getting caught."

"That's probably as good as I'm going to get," Sarah sighed. "Sit down. I'll get us some coffee. Or would you like something different?"

"Coffee… would be fine?" Jareth said, clearly a bit surprised. "Lots of milk and sugar." He looked down at the table, and not at her face. But he sat, turning around in his chair to watch her walk.

Sarah put a little sway in her hips and set her chiffon skirt swinging. The little green dress was the girliest thing currently in her closet, and her legs were cold despite stockings and legwarmers, but it was worth it in exchange for the warmth of his eyes moving over her body, something she could feel almost as a physical touch. When she returned with two fat mugs of milk-foamed coffee in one hand and a plate of poppyseed cake in the other, he had his back turned to her.

"There you go," she murmured against his ear as she set his mug down. And he didn't flinch, but it was a close thing. She sat opposite him and they raised their drinks at the same time.

"So," he said. "You won't play the Persephone game. May I ask what game it is you intend to play?"

"That's for you, if you want it," Sarah said, pushing the plate of cake toward him. "I thought you might be hungry. It's worth my last five-dollar-bill. After tonight, I'll be officially broke."

He took his hands off the table, not even looking at the surface quartered by her purse, his pomegranate, and the two of them. "Sarah," he said intently. "What game _are_ we playing?"

She took her own hands off the table and looked back at him, giving him gaze for gaze. "I'll tell you once I've decided. Once I've asked a few questions."

He raised his neck proudly and began a familiar phrase. "Lady, you've summoned me. Ask, and I will—"

"No," Sarah said, slapping her hand down on the table, like a drum. He seemed at a loss, words obscured, formula unfinished. "No," she said more kindly, turning her palm up, soft and vulnerable, asking to be touched. "Neutral ground. You're not here as a servant, and I'm not here as your… mistress." She blushed a bit at the connotation of the words, but she kept her demeanor otherwise quiet. "Nothing between us is going to work if you can't trust me. If you can't talk to me without rite and ritual and breaking thousand-year-old habits." Her unheld hand ached like a dismembered thing, but she kept it there between them.

"Is that all?" Jareth said in mild disdain, coming very close to rolling his eyes. "Only that? How can I trust you if I don't know what you want from me?"

"But you do know," Sarah said earnestly. "You _know_."

Slowly, slowly, his hand moved over the table like the shadow of a mouse and picked up her hand. His thumb ran in small circles over her palm. The feeling of his touch moved through her, tingling her skin, penetrating her flesh, moving up through her wrist, warming her heart deliciously.

"You'll have to tell me," he admitted. His other hand moved over the table like a snake and took her by the wrist. He was gentle, careful, though she knew at any moment he could tighten his grip and cause her pain.

"Sarah?" he reminded her, and he needed to, because with the sensation of touch travelling up her other arm, lighting up her breasts, flowing slowly down into the pit of her stomach, she wasn't really capable of remembering what he'd asked.

"I already told you," she complained, trying not to moan.

"Because if it's the sex you want, there's no fear of me denying you that. I feel as though I've been starved for a hundred years, and I've only had a taste of the banquet you've spread." His shoe slid between her ankles, nudged them apart. She felt the nubbly texture of his trousers against her stockings. Her knees parted. Nothing more than a part, a slight shift of the hips, nothing that he could have proven without a more adventurous journey to environs slightly higher up, but he smiled knowingly. "Emphasis, spread," he said, pressing his thumb down firmly into her palm. His leg withdrew slowly and subtly, and his foot came to rest against hers.

"It's not that," Sarah said, feeling her heartrate rise, just slightly. Then, amending for honesty, "Not only that."

"The power, then?" His teeth flashed in a gleeful smile, and she saw blue-black fire dancing in the pits behind his eyes. Freshwater pearls and tiny uncut emeralds spilled forth from the bouquet and rolled on the table like crumbs among the petals and leaves they mimicked.

"These are the things _you_ want," Sarah said, shaking her head, trying to clear it, trying to remember what it was she had come here to ask him in the first place. The tips of his shoes dug into the arches of hers, and she found herself sprawling open, slowly, like an often-read book, the chiffon of her skirts slithering against the softness of her freshly shaved thighs. The light was so bright, the smells of coffee and cake and the perfume of other human bodies and the smell of lust they were making between them filling her nose.

"If I asked you to let me have you atop this table right now, you'd say yes," Jareth whispered seductively. "That's what it is, to have your heart be a slave. And that's what I want from you, Sarah. I want you to know what it's like, to serve the desires of someone who has you in his power. To wait, trembling, for my least command. To—"

"I'd say no," Sarah said, finding a way past the hypnotism of his strange eyes and into her own self.

"No?" Jareth seemed perplexed. He let go of her wrist and sat back in his chair. She extricated her other arm and took a drink of her coffee. Every nerve ending still jumped; the cup wobbled slightly until she grasped it fully, and the bitter, rich taste and texture filled her senses instead. "I'd say no because I like hanging out here, and I think they'd kick me out if we did… that. Forever. Also, not so much into an audience. Degrading. But if you'd like to take me to your dirty private basement and make me scrub your boots in the buff and then take me six ways to Sunday, I'm game." She blushed, but held his gaze. "Are you going to eat your cake, or just have it? You can't have both."

Warily, he broke off a corner of the cake and ate a morsel. "You shouldn't be able to resist me," he said.

Sarah blew a sigh out the side of her mouth. "And yet, here I am, independent-minded. Did you think it would be that easy to control me? Or maybe… you were just looking for some excuse for yourself. I think I'm stronger than you. I think you know that. I think that scares you to death. So." She clutched the edges of the table, needing the stability it offered. "Is Nan's family still alive?"

He leaned back further in his chair, as if trying to get away from her, and patted his breast pocket.

"You can't smoke in here," Sarah informed him. "You'll have to go outside for that."

He mouthed a curse and crossed his arms over his chest. "They're currently my guests," he informed her, tilting his nose up into the air.

"Alive?" Sarah insisted, pressing her advantage.

"As alive as Polly's mama and papa were before I sent them home," Jareth said, scowling at her.

"How many others do you have hostage?" Sarah asked, fingers crushing down so hard against the table that thin paths of varnish were scourged off.

"All," Jareth said. "All the ones who disappeared." He clawed off another morsel of cake and stuffed it in his mouth, chewed angrily.

"Let them go."

"We've had this particular conversation before, Sarah," he said. Unable or unwilling to leave her presence for a cigarette, he instead pulled forth his lighter and snapped the lid open and closed. "My answer is the same. No."

"Why?" she asked. " _Why_ won't you?"

"Because the first thing they'll attempt to do is reclaim their familiar spirits, and I won't have that. I promised them, no more slavery. They've been treated appallingly, and they need to recover their self-respect."

Sarah found his answer surprising. She had assumed his motivations had begun and ended with revenge upon the witches. She hadn't really stopped to consider things from their servants' point of view.

"You don't like slavery, do you? What about the other ten young witches? The rest of the coven? Are they getting a close and personal education on the meaning of slavery?"

"As a matter of fact, no, Sarah. There are a considerable number of demons who are currently… my guests, as well."

"Torturing their former masters," Sarah said, imagining quite a few possibilities. "Vile."

"Isn't this a lovely _trial_ I'm having," Jareth said archly, taking another sip of coffee. "Aren't I just so glad I agreed to come out in the rain and the snow to be lectured by a hot-tempered _tart_. No, nobody is being tortured. They're negotiating. Peacefully. There's no violence being done in my kingdom. To the contrary."

"Because that's the way you want it?" Sarah said.

"Because you can't spell 'hostage' without 'host,'" Jareth quipped. "Really, Sarah, it's as if you don't know me at all. Was your baby brother subjected to torture and violence when he was my guest?"

He seemed to understand just as he'd said it that it was the wrong thing to say. It was as if cold water had splashed over them both, over their souls.

"That's the thing that eats me up inside," Sarah whispered. Her knuckles cracked against the table. "What you might have done to him, because I wasn't there for him."

"He wasn't hurt," Jareth replied shakily.

"No," Sarah said huskily. "He didn't have any bruises, no broken bones. And he slept that night like… like a baby. No screaming fits, no crying, no night terrors. Not even after. Nothing wrong."

"See? Fine," Jareth said, more confidently. "Why this rather late accusation, then?"

"Because he might _not_ have been fine," Sarah said.

They looked at each other for a long, long time, saying nothing.

"Ah," Jareth finally said thoughtfully. "I think I understand now. You feel responsible for their welfare." With a final snap, he put the lighter away. Several expressions traced across his mobile features: bemusement, contempt, wonder. The roulette wheel stopped at grudging respect when he looked her in the face again. "I suppose we have that in common." He drank again, and finished the cake. "Your mother wouldn't have felt so."

"Now who doesn't know whom?" Sarah asked, remembering the object case just in time to insert it. "This is completely the reason I wanted to go out with you tonight. You've been operating on the assumption that at any moment I'm going to become Linda. I think you even like the idea, theoretically. It means you know all the moves I'll make. Well, you don't. You never have." She stroked the outthrust lips of the flower-petals. "Let's say I had agreed to make the offering to Triptolemus. Let's say I'd been willing to play Persephone. I'd be locked in an endless relationship with the pair of you, moving back and forth from my lover to my mother. I'm not doing that."

"You might, in time," Jareth said warningly. "Old age murders youthful idealism. Your mother didn't begin with the notion of killing children for her own ends. It came to her over time. With age. With pain. With death approaching her."

"Bull _shit_ ," Sarah said. "Whatever rotten thing inside her made my mother that way, that's not in me. If it is, I'll cut it out the way the doctors did Irene's cancer. I'll wither it the way _you_ did her cancer. But I won't let it become part of me. My God," Sarah said in wondering disgust. "Jareth, when have I _ever_ been the kind of person to let someone else pay for my mistakes, when I could fix it? I'm going to live my life. I'm going to grow old, and one day I'll die. And that will be the end of it. And when it is, I hope you're there, so I can say 'I told you so.'" She let go of the table, hands aching, and drank down the rest of her coffee in one gulp, foam fizzling against her lip and around the edges of her mouth.

"So," he said. He leaned forward and held her chin in his hand. His thumb moved firmly against her lips, gathering the foam like grass-cuttings under a rake. And then he insinuated that thumb into her mouth, pressing forward, withdrawing, pressing further in, and she thought she might go mad from desire. She turned her face aside, and his electrifying touch left her.

"If you mean that, Sarah," he said. "If you truly mean it, then you should use your witch's voice to command me. Command me never to teach you the _infusionem animae_."

_Aha_ , Sarah thought. Greek was… well, Greek, to her, but she'd had two years of Latin in high school. The phrase Jareth had used translated roughly to _soul infusion_ , and she imagined it as if she were a glass of clear water, into which one drop of red dye swirled, turning the entirety to the crimson color of wine.

"No," Sarah said. "I won't command you. I'll only ask you not to. You're meant to take care of me, Jareth. To educate me. So step up to the challenge. Learn to exercise that free will of yours and teach me the things I should learn and don't teach me the things I shouldn't. All I can do is promise never to steal a body. And I do. I promise. Let me die the moment I succeed, if I do."

She felt the power of her words move through her, and into him, conducted as if by a charged current of wind. Strands of his hair lifted and crackled with sparks, but she held on.

"So much drama," he snitted, but she could see he was shaken by her vow. "You would have done better to command me."

"We're working on establishing a healthy relationship here," Sarah said. "That requires honesty and a certain amount of risk. Also? We're still playing that game, and commanding you is losing. Much as I love you, I'm not interested in throwing the match."

He stood up very suddenly, and the expression on his face was one Sarah couldn't read at all. He seemed embarrassed, for traces of pink appeared high on his cheeks, and the wisps of his visible hair bled out into vibrant color, all the shades of fire at night: vermillion, orange, gold.

"Don't go," she said, but he was only drawing money out of the pocket of his coat.

"I'm buying the next round," he said shortly. "I'll be right back." And he turned on his heel and wandered to the coffee bar like a man who'd received a stunning blow to the head.

_What just happened?_ Sarah wondered. And then she realized that without ulterior motive, without deception, without desire, without even thinking of it at all, she had told him that she loved him.

"Huh," she said. She watched Jareth place the order, watched him lean far to the side to watch the steam wand at work, and felt all the protective and tender feelings that her mother would have categorized as weakness.

"How about that," she said quietly to herself. "I even meant it, too."


	21. Puzzlement

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**Soundtrack for chapter 21:**

**Puddles Pity Party: "Day After Day"**   
**The Neighbourhood: "Sweater Weather"**

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Sarah noticed, on his way back to her, how other patrons—particularly the women—reacted to Jareth. Their eyes caressed him, idle hands reached out and touched him in ways that seemed accidental, chairs moved subtly so that they were more directly in his line of sight. He seemed aware of this attention and mildly amused by it, pushing his way past a crowd of half the house that only coincidentally all seemed to be wanting coffee at the very moment he was there to be brushed up against. He kept his balance when Sarah would have lost it, holding two tall glasses filled to overflowing with chocolate froth and whipped cream, garnished with Piroulines and sprinkles. They were the kind of drinks made for advertisements, too pretty and sweet to seem edible. As in advertisements, Jareth spilled no drop. And when he was past them, she saw how the other people looked at him perhaps once in confusion and went back, uncertainly, into other patterns of movement and intent, as if he'd never been there, or as if they'd forgotten that he was there. And she despised them all for fools.

By the time he set the glasses down on their oblong table, the blush she'd given him had mostly bled out of his skin and hair, and the last of the lingering looks of lust and yearning had faded as well. "Well?" he asked her, proud as the tallest cock of the walk.

"Very pretty," Sarah said, resisting the urge to laugh at the ludicrousness of the drinks. "You're pretty, too. I was afraid you were going to get mobbed there for a second."

"As was I." He sat and began using the rolled cookie as a utensil, shoveling whipped cream off Mount Diabetes and into his mouth. She watched that mouth, that face. Nothing grim, nothing godlike, just an expression of unselfconscious pleasure that was almost childlike. "It's a pleasant change from having people refuse to see me. Don't you want it?" he asked suddenly, gesturing toward her drink. "Was it the wrong thing?"

"I want to enjoy looking at it," Sarah said. "And you. Before I have either."

His nostrils flared in satisfaction as he made short work of the garnish. Her toes tapped against the floor. She wanted to hold on to this moment, but the moment was already gone.

"Jareth, I have questions to ask you. And I don't want…I'm not trying to shame you, or to hurt you, though I think you're probably going to be hurt by me asking. I'm asking because I'm ignorant and I need to know the answers."

"Oh," he said, visibly deflating. "We're on _that_ subject again."

"I'm sorry," Sarah said. "It was going so well, this date."

"It's fine," he said briskly. "Did you bring Scrabble with you? I find a game eases the sting of direct inquiry." His mouth, which had been a source and a sign of pleasure, drew into the hardness of a frown.

"I didn't bring Scrabble," Sarah said. "But I'll find us something." She touched his shoulder as she stood and went to the bookshelves crowded against one wall, cheap paperbacks for 50 cents and cheap hardbacks for a dollar, and a stack of board games and puzzles for rent to the patrons. She dropped the customary quarter into the honor kitty and perused her options. Mousetrap seemed a bit cruel, and Guess Who a bit juvenile. So she settled for a puzzle with a picture of a vast ocean seascape, and hoped that enough pieces were there to present a complete picture.

"Here," she said, opening the box. For a while, they were content with near silence as the Pumphouse spoke and moved and lived around them, searching for edge pieces and corners, moving outward from there. When their hands brushed in the search for pieces, Sarah paused and caressed his hand, trying to soothe the hurt she had to cause. When the frame was more or less intact, she took a fingerful of whipped cream from her drink and ate it. It tasted better than she thought it would, made in a cracker and not from a can. Light, sugared just enough to bring out the taste of the milk, filling.

"Kiss me," he told her. And she did; leaning forward, the wood of the table pressing against her chest, finding his mouth firm with worry, and sweet to taste. It was a brief kiss, all told, and he leaned his forehead against hers as they stared down at the blank puzzle rather than at each other.

"Please don't ask me," he whispered. "It would be so much easier, if you only pretended I was a blank slate."

"Like every other woman before me," Sarah breathed. "You know I can't. I have to ask."

"Then ask," he said dully.

She went ahead before she could lose her nerve. It was such a cruel thing to do. "Did you do more than just teach my mother the _infusionem animae_? Did you help to murder my sisters?"

His fingers crept out and latticed with hers. It hurt, and she returned it with her own strength.

"Jareth?"

"I'm guilty," he said. "Guilty, guilty. Teaching her was enough to make me guilty, but I did more than that."

"And do you feel any remorse?" Sarah asked, trying not to let her disgust with him tell in her voice.

"Please don't leave me," he begged her. "What good is remorse without contrition, or the ability to never repeat a wrong? I didn't have that, Sarah. They were luxuries I wasn't afforded."

"You have that luxury now. Jareth," and she touched the silky fringe of his hair, cupped a razor-sharp cheekbone without cutting her palm. "What do you remember about them?"

He backed away from her and fiddled carelessly with piles of puzzle-pieces. His eyes looked suspiciously red. He slapped down a correct piece with nonchalance, but he didn't let go of her hand. "This hurts," he said.

"I know," she whispered. "Can you tell me?"

"Of your mother's line, I remember four, counting the last one she took. Only four. I remember that I rebelled against her, the first time. After that, she took my self from me, made me gouge out parts of my memory. Pieces of me missing. There are events of my life that are gone as cleanly as if I were dead. But she didn't have much finesse in her early days. I can still recall names, recall directions, recall trying to resist commands, but I can't remember so many faces, so many events. What I have are four women, four memories of dead women, and even what I have of them is a memory of a memory. Ghosts under glass."

She tried not to let her horror show, tried to tamp down the hatred she felt blaze up, against her mother. "How did you manage that much?"

"Whenever your mother took a new name, a new body, there was occasionally… clutter left over, memories tied to the flesh. Garbage, trash for me to take out. But I hoarded them. I suppose you can guess where I hid them. After all, I hid memories of you there, as well. Just in case." He refused to meet her eyes, concentrating instead on fitting more pieces into place.

"In case I died," Sarah said. Disgust and hatred for Linda turned to pity for him. "You were very clever. I'm so sorry you had to be so clever. I am so _sorry_ for what she did to you." More, she was terrified at the implications of her power over him. She could command him now, with no one to stop her, that he utterly forget Linda, and he would. There would only be unattached baubles left for him to indifferently admire and be curious over, in the Labyrinth—unless she commanded him to forget it as well. And she hated herself for even thinking the idea over, and she stopped when she remembered that it was exactly what he had done to her in the Labyrinth, when she had gone to a hazily-recalled party, and worn a white dress, and shattered a spell—and forgotten Toby, even just for half-an-hour.

"There's a way for you to make amends," Sarah told him. "Look at me." She tugged his hand. "You'll feel better, Jareth, and you'll be better, if you can apologize to _them_. Like you did with that little ghost in your basement."

"But then they'll leave me," he said, pulling free. "I won't have them anymore. It would be like murdering them a second time."

"You'll have your memories of them, not some sort of spiritual Xerox. I think this idea might even have been in the back of your mind when you had me help with that ghost. Do you still remember him? Even though he's gone now?"

"I remember," he said quietly. He stared down at the table, stiff and miserable.

"Someday, I'll die and leave you," Sarah said, hating how cruel the truth was. "Are you going to keep my soul in a little glass cage for the rest of eternity? Maybe handling it every day, and then maybe once a month, and then not at all until it's just a pile of dust on a forgotten shelf? Leaving what's left of my soul to rot, wanting you?" She took another sip of the oversweet drink, barely tasting it. "I would hope you wouldn't be able to do something like that. I would hope you have the strength to let me go. But I don't get to choose. That will be your decision."

He looked away, clearly not wanting to hear her.

"I've been thinking over this a lot," Sarah said. "Ever since I gave you your freedom. Not just how I would be responsible for every bad thing you do, but about how badly your own freedom frightens you. How badly you seem to need me, not just want me. You're a king in your own country, and there at least ten—eleven, counting Nan—young and impressionable women who would love to take you on. They'd fear you and love you and let you rule them, and you would be their slave. But you don't want that. You didn't choose that. You chose _me_."

He clawed angrily through the pieces in the box. "And if I agree, will you forgive me?"

"It's not _my_ forgiveness that you need," Sarah said. "It's theirs." She fiddled with her straw; her rolled cookie had lost all structural integrity and was past eating. "Here's the sweetener, Jareth. If any one of these ghosts wants revenge on my mother, I'll allow her to have it. Even as far as taking her life. They have that right."

"This is a dangerous proposition," Jareth said after a long pause. "Phillip was nothing compared to them. To Hrodheid. To Margarethe, Beatrice… and Linda. They've partaken of my substance for years. They are strong, they are aware, and they are your blood relatives. Remember how easily that man's persona overwhelmed you. What your sisters can do… is much more powerful. You might lose yourself and never return. As much as I want your mother dead, I'm not willing to trade you for her."

"I matter that much to you," Sarah said, slightly shaken. "I really do?"

"There's no one else for me," he said, with grim certainty. "Not anyone. I'd rather be nothing than belong to anyone else. You ninny," he added. He reached out for her and she reached back, and she cursed the table for existing. She wanted to be in his lap. She wanted him to hold her and tell her he loved her, even if it was a lie, but she had to settle for holding on to his forearms and nuzzling her cheek against his. His breath, panting with unsaid words; hers, with fear for the dangerous course she'd set.

"If you agree, then, we'll start tomorrow night."

"We'll start when I'm damn well ready," Jareth huffed. "If this is the story of my redemption, I'm at least allowed to set the date. A month from now."

"A week," Sarah said. "Remember, my mother is alive and plotting right now, and she may have some magic of her own at her disposal. Time is of the essence."

"A fortnight," Jareth said with finality. " _No_ ," he said, clutching her arms tight as she tried to undercut his bid. "I need time with you. With _just_ you. I need to know the taste of you, the feel of you, the weight of your soul. I need time. I need to dig my talons into the substance of you so I can draw you up if you begin to drown. And if I fail you… I want the memory of you intact. I want it in my body, just under my skin." He stroked the flesh of her forearm, which goosebumped. "Tell me you don't want that, too."

"I do," Sarah said, wanting to crawl bodily over the table and have him, and that was with just one touch.

"You'll need to wear that." His eyes cut over to her purse, as if he could see his heart afire inside it. She drew out the box, and undid the knot.

"This?" she asked, holding it in her hand between them. The metal of his pendant was warm to the touch, softer than skin. She caressed it with one thumb, and she saw him quiver in response.

"It will protect you. But at a price. You'll need practice in using it. You should start now. Put it on."

She felt her whole body twist with anticipation as his heart throbbed in her palm. There was a single thick slot at the apex of the pendant, and she began to thread the red ribbon through and through it. She felt herself melting with desire, saw him lick his teeth in anticipation as she raised the ribbon to her neck. But then he stopped her. He grabbed her wrists, one in each hand, and lowered them down to the table.

"No," he said, voice straining. He shook his head as if dismissing everything. "No. I can't let you do this. Not that, not them, not any of it."

"You already agreed," Sarah said shakily. But he forced her burden down, down, until it was ensconced once again in its candy setting, and he whipped the ribbon out of it and retied the box in five hard and determined gestures.

"I've changed my mind. Don't you understand? My strategy has been to coax you into wearing the slave-collar, making you my servant. Watching you strain against that tether, getting pleasure out of your hatred, your abjection. And now you're actually offering me what I thought I wanted, and I don't want it!" His last words were shouted violently, cords in his neck straining. A few people turned their heads and then turned away, but Jareth kept holding on to her as if he were afraid she would melt, like snow, the second he let go. "Twice now you've sent me away," he said in a more conversational tone of voice, but with the same intensity as if he were screaming his lungs out. "And I thought it was because you wanted to hurt me. I thought you hated me. But you don't hate me. All you want to do is help me. For hell's sake, Sarah. Why?"

Her hands wanted to scratch open the box, wanted to scratch his eyes out, to make entry for her to crawl inside, to hurt him and have him and have him have her, but he held on and wouldn't let her go.

"Because there's no one else who _can_ help you," Sarah said, struggling once more for effect, and then stilling. "No one else strong enough. No one else who wouldn't… let you completely dog them into something awful, or… try to enslave you again. God, I think I'd _kill_ anyone who tried." She panted, feeling the power build in her body. "And because I love you. _Damn_ you." The flowers near her began to visibly wilt, and the pomegranate flexed oddly, as if about to split its own skin in two. Between them, the wood of the table began to express beads of long-dried sap, and the resinous scent of pine filled her nose. She felt the tapping of a puslebeat headache throbbing in her forehead, a sensation she'd felt only a few times before while overextending her abilities. But this time, she wasn't extending herself. She wasn't trying to do anything, but the power was suddenly there, working through her, dancing her like a marionette.

"Sarah," he said, shaking her wrists. "I can feel the energy inside you. You're building up too much. You're going to hurt yourself. Let it go."

"I don't know how," she said between clenched teeth.

One of the puzzle-pieces sparked and curled into abrupt yellow flame.

Burning down the entire building suddenly seemed like a very real possibility.


	22. Firebreak

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 22:**

**Sister Machine Gun: "Inside"**  
**David Bowie: "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)"  
**

* * *

_Author's Note: Mild smut content alert. Clutch your pearls, etc._

* * *

"This is what I meant when I said you had no discipline," Jareth said conversationally, letting go of both her wrists. Another puzzle-piece burnt up, leaving an exact ashy silhouette of itself on the table, releasing the smell of pine in a squiggle of smoke.

"Help me," Sarah said, half an order and half a plea, desperately unbinding all she could, but there was no core of the magic or the fire to be unbound. Various other things happened: the puzzle-pieces they'd assembled unmated with each other and spread themselves equidistantly upon the table. The pomegranate split, spilling red beads of pips into the pieces of the cardboard sea. Under her cardigan, her gossamer dress unzipped itself. And still she felt the fire coming behind. All this was prelude to bonfire, herself in the center.

"Help yourself," Jareth said in quasi-disgust, as if it were spilled milk between them and not a raging primal force of magic. "You just volunteered to do much more dangerous things than this, in a fortnight. Perhaps it's a sign that we should rethink your plan."

The remains of their drinks bubbled like volcanic mud in their glasses. "Please," Sarah said. "Tell me what to do."

"You can ask of me what a witch might ask," he said quietly. "But you'll pay what a witch must pay."

"Fine!" she said, practically yelling as the pomegranate began to cook with the high sweet smell of citrus cake. It took everything she had to keep the fire away from the tissue-paper wrappings of the bouquet. For once his apology-gift started to burn, she felt as though everything else might as well, too.

But Jareth was willing to cooperate now that there were strings attached. "First, calm yourself," he said. "Can fire burn fire? And I'm fire. Nothing will burn beyond me. I'll keep it from getting away from you. Be calm. Imagine me the firebreak, insurmountable. No one will be hurt. Be calm. See it."

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The heat was still there, the fire straining to get loose, but she tethered it on a ribbon of soot, envisioned a circle the circumference of herself and Jareth, beyond which the fire could not go.

"Now," he said. "What's the opposite of fire?"

"Water," she answered instantly, maintaining the image of the firebreak in her head.

"Not always," Jareth said, maddeningly, infuriatingly, pyrocastically. "It could be fire, a small fire set to divert a larger one. Or earth, to smother. Or even air, in its absence."

"It's water," Sarah insisted through clenched teeth. "Water can't burn."

"Then summon water, if you're so certain" he told her snidely. "And you might want to hurry. People are beginning to take notice of how warm it's getting in here."

"I don't know how to do that," Sarah said. She opened her eyes in frustration, and the first thing that caught her eye was the puzzle, the ocean afire now, twenty, thirty pieces each with a pinpoint of flame in its exact center. _Water can burn_ , she thought in wonder.

"This is your air hand," Jareth said, clapping his fist around her right hand. "The one that thinks, the one that speaks. Which is your social hand? The one that holds the fork when you cut your meat, the hand that holds your cup?"

"It's the same hand," Sarah said in aggravation.

"Well then, half your trouble is your deplorable table etiquette," Jareth said, calmly critical. "No wonder you can't control the fire. How about self-pleasure?" His other hand came around her left hand. "This one. You reserve your deft hand for your lover, Sarah, and the one left for yourself. Summon the water with your social hand, your water hand." He let her go and leaned back, watching what she might do with this half-assed tuition.

She scanned the table. Their drinks had become sullenly bubbling cakes of granular sugar, smelling of coffee and cream and baking chocolate—useless. The pomegranate-seeds, having burst from their fruit, were now bursting their pips in clots of red. All there was of water was her own spit… and the incomplete image of the burning ocean spread between them.

She stuck her index finger on her tongue, remembering to use the left one before he could yell at her, and caught a daub of saliva cupped there, and lay it down precisely on the nearest burning pinpoint of flame. Salt water came up to meet it, the ocean of tears, and it sizzled and went out. But there were at least a hundred other fires, tiny heralds of a larger fire that her magic was summoning. Her mouth would be bone-dry before she doused even a quarter of the flames.

_Self-pleasure_ , she thought, and remembered one place of flowing water that never seemed to run dry, an eternal cup of joy. But she'd rather let the entire place burn down than let even one random person see her touch herself in Jareth's presence, because fuck that.

_Symbolic. It's all symbolic_ , Sarah thought. _Foundations of bewitchment._ _Make one thing be another, even if it's just for a moment._ And she took the first two fingers of her left hand, and imagined she was touching herself without touching herself, and lifted the water from the printed paper of the ocean instead of her sex, and drew it upward, upward, around the burning core of fire—just as she might touch herself, call up the rigid core of her pleasure and lave its fire in her water. She could almost feel the magic as a tangible thing, tactile and responsive as her own Venus mount. It made all the other little spellss she'd laboriously studied and memorized and held ready in her hands for defense seem like academic exercises, frail as the tissue-paper around the flowers which now, she knew with certainty, would not be allowed to burn. This power here, in her left hand—this was as real as her voice.

"Good," he said, but his voice seemed to come from so far away, so beyond this struggle. "Now send the fire into the water, Sarah, and put it out."

From the picture, the scent of ocean water came, and then the water itself. Its coldness crashed like a spilled water-glass, like the splash of a breaking wave, over the table entire. The remnants of the wave pooled between her legs and in the seat of her chair with icy vindictiveness, and she saw he was in a similar predicament. But the fire was gone. Flotsam of fruit and petals and puzzle-pieces floated drunkenly on the table between them, and then dried and stuck at low tide as the water receded. Other than a strange smell of scorching and unusual cookery, there was no sign of anything strange having happened.

"Nice," Jareth said in disgust, standing up and dancing from one foot to another, his trousers as monumentally soaked as if he had wet himself. "I said send the fire to the water, not bring water to the fire. Eugh!"

"Experiencing some shrinkage?" Sarah said with false tenderness, even as she did relatively the same, shaking the water out of her skirts. Her gossamer dress had the advantage of being synthetic; she could feel it already shedding water, coming dry. "A little icewater in your crotch slowing your roll? There's more where that came from."

"Why are you being so _mean_ to me?" Jareth asked incredulously. He stroked his right hand against his dry thigh, not quite touching his doused crotch, and the water ran to his fingers like a dog coming to heel. He deposited the watery orb into an empty glass, which steamed angrily but did not crack. He stared her down. "I just _helped_ you."

"Like you wanted to help me with the offering to Triptolemus," Sarah said sarcastically, though she felt woefully wronged. She felt for the zipper at her back, and managed to get her dress a quarter of the way to decency, but then the zipper stuck. She thought she might cry. " _You_ made this happen."

"No," he said, his quiet anger interrupting her self-pity. "I didn't do it. _You_ did."

Her mouth dropped open. He was going to put this all on her?

"And stop playing with your zipper. Leave yourself just as you are, as a reminder of your own magical slovenliness. Now," he said, gathering up his coat and flapping water from its shiny water-repellant surface. "I'm going out for a long-delayed smoke. You—stay here." His eyes lit with sudden inspiration. "When I return, I want the table clean and ordered. And your panties, too. By way of apology."

"But—"

"A very low price, considering our bargain."

"But—"

"Or do I leave?" He laughed to himself in obviously cooling anger and self-disgust. "No, I can't even threaten that. It would be a lie. I'll be back in one-quarter of an hour. Don't disappoint me." He gave her a wicked little superior smile and patted her hair as he breezed away, lighter already in his hand.

* * *

It was aggravating that Jareth could turn something as tedious and personally repellant as manual labor into something erotic—not for him, but for her—but when the time had elapsed he found her sitting at a dry table and a dry floor, assembling together the damp cardboard puzzle-pieces she had separated and then doused. Their glasses gone, she had instead begged one full of water for the flowers, replacement of the glass she had lied about, the one that had tipped, the one that had necessitated the borrowing of bar towels. And when he returned, her cardigan was buttoned all the way up to her collarbones, to keep the dress from sliding off her down her front. And Jareth took all this in and seemed almost… contrite.

"It _was_ partly my fault," he said quietly, as he took off his coat and sat down across from her. He pulled the water in the pieces away to himself and flicked it down on the floor like an over-saturated paintbrush. He didn't look at her, and instead concentrated on finding and separating shades of blue and grey, the white of froth, into distinct piles.

"Say that again?" Sarah said, a bit sharply.

"Partly my fault. Perhaps ten per cent," he said, holding off any more blame. "My presence is going to provoke you into producing excess magic, and you have no coven to disperse it to. That you have no self-control or any decent education is _your_ fault. Ninety per cent."

"I have news for you. Magic isn't the only thing you provoke."

"Provoke. From the root _voce_ , to speak aloud."

"Like aggravation. Rage. And I know Latin," Sarah said. "It's everything else I need to learn."

"Yes," he said, and they both concentrated on sorting pieces for a bit. "I have to say, a fight is as good as a fuck where you're concerned, Sarah. You're tantalizing when you're all worked up. Speaking of, where are my panties?"

"They're on your ass if they're anywhere. But I took you for a boxers type of guy."

"Never. Ruins the line of the trousers." He didn't meet her eyes, but she could feel his eyes staring gimlets at her. "Sarah, I'm quite serious. You agreed to pay me for what I taught you, and the price I set was ridiculously low. If I don't get them, I'm liable to ask something you won't like quite as much. Where are they?"

"There's a saying," Sarah said. "One of the little jokes we used to pass around in class. _Semper ubi sub ubi_."

"Always wear… under… wear." She snuck a glance at his face, watched him grimace as he translated. "That's awful." He held out his hand and made a 'gimme' gesture.

"I can't give you what I haven't got," she smiled in smug triumph. "I had a feeling you might snatch them, like you did last time. So no _sub ubi_ for me. I didn't wear any."

"Prove it," he said, and his shoe came down and pressed hard upon her toes. His gaze was intense, and she felt him caressing her naked body in his mind's eye, although his foot was the only thing touching her.

"You'll just have to trust me," she murmured, putting the last piece in place. All the pieces were there, none missing. And she was given an ocean seascape, roiling with blue and green and grey, and the slate rocks underneath, damp as her thighs. And below the waves, beyond, a cascade of white fire, moving powerfully and vibrantly, real, under the pouring of the painted sea.

"You, the water, I the fire. But see, Sarah. Water _does_ burn."

* * *

 

She wasn't sure how they got to the women's bathroom, if she had led him or he had led her, or if they created a scene or if the whole room was unaware of the lust between them. She didn't care. It was a moment of the present, all other things forgotten, and he was lifting her onto the formica lip of the countertop, door closed and locked with one precise turn.

He lifted her hem and plunged his fingers knuckle-deep inside her, found her wet as the ocean, and moaned in a pleasure so intense it was as if he'd put another part of himself inside her. And she wrapped her legs around his skinny backside, trying to coax him in, but he only worked at her intently, his thumb, his left thumb, coming to press against her clit as if he were ringing a doorbell, and that impatiently. And she came, instantly, hiding her shriek against a biteful of his flannel collar. After that was only a vague feeling that she ought not to have left her purse out on the table.

"You bastard, when are you going to fuck me?" Sarah said, leaning her head against his shoulder. He hadn't stopped fingering her. He moved with slow pulsing strokes against her parted flesh, only occasionally withdrawing to spread her never-spent cistern against her inner thighs, scent-marking his territory. Her hips and thighs rocked with every touch. "Please," she said. "Please fuck me."

"Tomorrow," he promised, but his voice was tight with tension. "All things in their proper time, and place." He bit down gently, gently, on her pouting lip, and his free hand pulled her dress down, so it was like a frothy belt of chiffon around her waist, and her sweater became a wadded pile of wool nesting in the sink. He palmed a breast, tight, tight, tight enough that she thought it would burst, and when he licked her neck and began to kiss her mouth in earnest, she came again.

"Now," she begged him, when he set her mouth free. "Please, please. Now!" She ran her hands over the crown of his head, the roots of his hair, dislodging his cap and letting the silky texture of him fill her senses. She saw him waver, saw the beginnings of sparks rustle through the roots of his hair, felt the muscles of his neck quiver with building lust. "Please," she murmured in his ear, and suckled at his earlobe like it was a lemon-drop.

"No," he gasped against her, but his will and his body were at odds. She grabbed his waistband and pulled him tight between her. Fingertips were dumb and dull things compared to what she could feel against her nether-lips; the heat of him, the pulse of blood, the scratchy slide of cotton-poly blend. She found a button, undid it. She felt the shocking coldness and teeth of his zipper as she undid it. And he was helping her, and he was kissing her, and he was fighting her, and he was caressing her with his left hand.

"Water can burn," Sarah panted in his ear.

"I said no," His words were feeble, and the strength of his erection under her hand, caressed through cotton, told a different story.

"Please, no," he begged her, and he was truly begging her.

She let him go. It took him a moment to feel how she'd released him. He took a step back from her and sighed deeply, a breath of both relief and frustration. He clenched his fists as tightly as he clenched his eyelids. And his body trembled, as if there were a thousand tiny cords of fire tethering them together, slowly snapping like strands of hair in a fire.

He bent down to get his hat. Spread-legged, the counter cool under her buttocks, she let him get a good view of all he was denying himself.

"If you don't fuck me soon, I'm going to lose my shit," she said, vulgar words at odds with the tender gestures she made, reaching out to stroke the top of his head as he knelt before her. "I don't need it to be romantic. I don't need flowers or chocolate, or poetry. I don't need a big bed and spooning and breakfast. I just need you. Like I need to breathe."

"I need you too," he agreed, just as frustrated, but he kissed her inner thigh sweetly as he stood and put his hat back on. "But I'm romantic, and I _want_ all those things. Poetry. Snuggling. A bed. And since we agreed that I'm the one who gets to choose, I'll have what I want." He zipped himself back up, apparently willing to utterly ignore his own protesting flesh, the lust of him that she could see wanted nothing more than to be set loose, to drive into her, to burn inside her. He put it away as if he were putting down a book in the middle of an exciting chapter, but he did put himself away. And he kissed her again, this time soothingly, his tongue gentle and couth, resting his hands atop her thighs, running one finger under the taut elastic of her garter. Sarah felt how easily that his banked desire, and hers, could burst forth in fresh fire, but she stopped herself from doing more than wrapping her arms around his neck and sighing softly against him.

The kiss broke, as it had to. Decorously, as if easing a garment off an ornamental doll, he pulled the crushed fabric of her dress over her head. "Now there's a pretty picture," he said, "Pretty as pornography. I'm keeping this," he said, wadding the fabric of her dress into one hand.

"I can't leave this bathroom naked," Sarah said, with as much outrage as she could muster. "Be reasonable. Give it back to me."

"No," he said, delighted with himself, clearly not to be dissuaded.

"Then give me your shirt," she said, trying a different tack. "It's so cold outside. I'll catch pneumonia."

"You have your coat," he said negligibly, but he took off the outer two shirts he was wearing, one of flannel and one of white cotton, and gave the latter to her. More, he dressed her in it. It was too big for him, which was fortunate for her, and the longest edge of the shirt-tails came to just above her knees when she was buttoned up. She shrugged herself back into her sweater, which was now damp and likely pestilential from the filthy sink. Still. She looked dressed and not naked, if making some strange fashion choices.

_I love you_ , she thought, as he peeked coyly out of the opened restroom door, like a child scouting the terrain toward Home Base in a game of hide-and-seek. And he held her hand as they stole away, leaving the bathroom smelling of bleach toilet-cakes and shoddy paper towels, and sex. Over that, coming up from her skin as though it was coming from her skin, his shirt was full of the smell of him, and in that delirious cloud there was no room to worry about anything else. His fingers latticed hers, and squeezed hers. _I love you, and tomorrow isn't too long to wait._


	23. An Older Woman

 

 

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 23:**  
**The Postal Service: "This Place is a Prison"**

* * *

Sarah's phone rang, taking her out of some very sweet dreams. She fumbled for the handset and dropped it down again, cutting whoever it was off. But the damage had been done; she woke up enough to see the time—7:15—before the phone rang again.

_Don't answer it_ , she begged herself. _Don't answer. Don't. It's too early for anything but bad news._ Still, she picked up, full of responsibility and misgivings.

The line was silent.

"Jareth?" Sarah asked. The line stuttered, clicked, died. Annoyed and afraid, she held down the receiver and waited. Almost instantly, it rang again. As quickly, she lifted her finger.

"Hello?" Impatient, afraid, listening, she got the blank silence of an open line. Then there was a feedback whine that chiseled into her eardrum, almost making her drop the phone. And then harsh static, a television tuned to a blank channel with the volume up.

"Hello!" Sarah shouted into the void. "Is anybody there?"

_"… help me,"_ a woman's voice cried out, under layers of fog and thunderous static snow. And a second voice crying for help in the same words, and a third, a fourth, a chorus of pleading screams and cries.

"Where are you?" Sarah asked. Then, revising, full of command, "Tell me where you are!"

The lyrics of the agony-chorus shifted. _"Underground. Underground… underground! Help me… save us! … hurting me… killing us!"_

"Who is?"

There was such silence for a moment that she was afraid the line might have gone dead. Instead, that tempest of snow fanned back through the receiver, with voices muttering, calling, telling her what she didn't want to hear.

_"Jareth. Jareth… Jareth. Jareth!"_ They moaned and screamed and their voices whirled through a blender of tormented screams, suitable music for Hell. Why was it that torture sang soprano? Why was it always a woman's part?

"I'll get you out," she promised them, enraged by their pain. "I'll help you out and I'll pay him back for this, I promise you!"

Then silence, and all she had was a dial tone, and the dark.

* * *

Dr. Kline held office hours from eight to ten a.m. on Mondays and Fridays, a transparently obvious method of discouraging all but the most determined students for a one-on-one chat. Sarah had figured this out on Wednesday morning when she'd read and re-read the map of the grand old building that held the mythology, religion, and anthropology departments, gotten lost twice, and finally found Dr. Kline's office in what must have been the very most garrety of all garrets, closed, the curt card listing office hours and no word about appointments or phone numbers. By the time her alarm had gone off twenty minutes after the mother of all freakish phone calls, Sarah was showered, dressed, and packed for her ten o'clock class, and hopeful that she might get some help from the mysterious Dr. Kline with her increasingly complicated situation.

She saw as soon as she reached the top of the last flight of stairs, slightly out of breath, that she ought to have come earlier. There were four students waiting in line before her, occupying the only two chairs and the only free stretch of wall. Sarah sat down on the last step instead, and leaned her head back to let the dim light filter onto her face through the skylight. After ten minutes, she opened up her copy of The City of Ladies and became so immersed in Lady Rectitude's discourse on the feminine virtues of devotion, chastity, and of all things, prophecy, that she hardly noticed the line emptying out.

A rather deep and unfeminine voice dragged her out of her reading. "You aren't one of mine," Dr. Kline said, with what seemed to Sarah an insulting amount of relief. She recognized her as the ancient Anthropology instructor, the one who'd been in Old Husker with them the day Nan handed over the heart-shaped box. Dr. Kline was wearing a three-piece men's suit, which might have been fashionable in the days of Annie Hall, but was now nearly the height of frumpishness once more. Her hair was wildly excessive, a frizzled bush that hung down past her tweed shoulders, and her eyes were bright as a bird's.

"I'm Sarah Williams," she said, standing up and folding the book around her finger. On the second stair riser, they were almost of a height.

Dr. Kline sniffed. "Sarah Williams. If you're attempting to register for my Fall seminar, it's full, and I don't overenroll. If you're trying to change your major, you'll need to speak to Dr. Bruce, second floor."

"I came to see you," Sarah said, somewhat daunted. "Triptolemus… recommended you to me."

The old woman seemed utterly unimpressed. "He would, that old fart. Come back Monday, Sarah Williams. There are four graduate students I'm seeing today, and you're an unknown undergraduate who doesn't need me. Or merit me. Take your pick, be offended. I don't care. I'm tenured."

"I'm a witch," Sarah blurted out in desperation. "And I need some history on my people. The school spirit said you could help."

Dr. Kline eyed her up and down. "You don't look the type. No cute pentagram pendant or tie-dye or mood rings. Are you some new strain of tree-worshipper come to trouble me?"

"No," Sarah said fiercely. "I'm not religious. I'm a witch. I can call the fire and summon spirits, and if you don't let me talk to you right now, I'm liable to do both right here in this hallway."

"You do either, and I'll have you expelled so quickly your head will spin," Dr. Kline replied. She took a watch on an actual chain out of her vest-pocket and looked at the time. "I'll give you fifteen minutes if you can restrain yourself and answer one question, Sarah Williams. If God were a woman…?"

"What?" Her head felt spinny.

"Answer. Finish. If God were a woman…"

Sarah shook her head in disgust. "If God were a woman, women would be pricks," she said. "Is that the answer you're looking for, or should I come back Monday?"

"No. That will do." Dr. Kline flipped her watch closed. "Come in, come in, come sit down." And surprised, feeling wrongfooted, but also rather pleased, Sarah followed the diminutive professor into her office. A tiny office, all the walls made into bookshelves, and an electric coffeemaker churning on a tiny endtable, also stacked-under with books and papers and folders. She took the one chair available.

"I see Fisher is still assigning that French crap," Dr. Kline said, nodding at her Christine de Pizan. She banged down a chipped cup and filled it. "All the French believe in their bones that they're descended directly from Jesus Christ himself." The coffee smelled burnt, and tasted burnt when she took a sip, but it was warming, and made her happy.

"Not a Francophile, then?" Sarah said.

"The French took all their witches and turned them into fairies. They've never been afraid of women. Never had a god who was a woman. Though to be fair, they've never had a god who wasn't a castrato, either. No. I'm not a Francophile. No loss. They love themselves enough already. What are the roots of the witchcraft you practice?"

"What if I told you they were French?" Sarah asked, concealing a smile, but Dr. Kline gave her a sharp look.

"I'd tell you to transfer over to RISD and stop wasting my time. Tick-tock, Sarah Williams."

"They're German," Sarah said. "What can you tell me about the relationship between the pre-Christian Germanic people and their gods, and witches?"

"Have you read the Malleus Maleficarum? Unabridged?"

"Quite a few times," Sarah said proudly. "In English, and in Latin."

"And what did it tell you?"

"That men are so anxious about their genitals that they'll kill a hundred women if they think just one is laughing at his dick."

Dr. Kline sniffed. It might have been disguising a chuckle. Or perhaps not. Her face remained stony. "Crude, but essentially accurate. But can you tell me why their fear? What was Kramer so afraid of that he'd write that book?"

"Sprenger, too," Sarah added, showing off.

"Sprenger was a legitimizing afterthought. What was it about women that made that dry-balled old dog _write_ the witch-hunter's manual, that advocated the torture and burning of thousands of women with no definitive proof of wrongdoing?"

"Because it's _real_ ," Sarah said. "Witchcraft is real. The Seven Wonders are real. I've done some and seen the others done."

"More than that. I doubt Kramer ever clapped eyes on anything more supernatural than a jug of beer. But he listened. He understood something. He felt something everyone else in that rigid pedantic culture felt, too. And here's what it is he must have known: there was a time when God was a woman, and Her priests were women, and She and they must have been so formidable and implacable that it took three centuries of woman-killing to lay Her to rest."

"Chauvinists," Sarah said, thinking about her Women's Studies class last semester, which had spun her head with all the smart, on-point clues about the nature of women's repression in modern society. All the bullshit about a woman's place, how that place had been carefully socially constructed as a cage, had filled her with a righteous indignation that felt very good at the time. Now, less so.

"You claim to be a witch, and you think that men weren't right to be afraid of women? Of a goddess with teeth to her? Or to be justified in trying to eradicate witches? Are you weak, or just naïve?"

"I'm ignorant," Sarah admitted, finding herself charmed by Dr. Kline, in spite of her condescending attitude. She was pleasantly reminded of a pricklier Aunt Bub. "But this is all Early Modern and medieval stuff. I need to know more about pre-Christian Germanic paganism. Who do I read for that?"

"No one," Dr. Kline said derisively. "Nothing exists but supposition, conjecture, and prurient fantasies dreamed up by the overlapping anthropological categories of men and academics. In short, the worst blather." She waved her hand, dismissing them all. "Catholicism finished off what Roman syncretism began. Those old German deities didn't stand a chance against the armies, roads, and currency of Rome, not with their people so fascinated by shiny new male gods and weapons and fire insurance. At that point, their female gods were all dead. If you're interested in clue-hunting, read about Vesta and her forms of worship. Or ritual practices described in The Golden Bough. But if you're trying to find absolute answers, reliable as an episode of Jeopardy, you're going to be disappointed. This sort of thing won't be written down in any book. Or at least not one you would be able to find."

"Shit," Sarah said under her breath. She refilled her cup. The coffee was burnt, but it was hot. "So what do I do?"

"You're not a stupid girl," Dr. Kline said, writing something down on a notecard, obviously preparing to conclude their time together. "You at least seem to grasp that women aren't innately more virtuous than men, only more curbed in their social appetites. Gods, goddesses, the same. But men have almost forgotten that they used to curb us because they were afraid of us. I don't doubt these are the labor pains of some terrible birth—or rebirth. Be careful, Sarah Williams, with your witchcraft. Every witch is a great open door into the world beyond this one, and only fools and saints can look through that door and not tremble." She sat up from her chair and handed Sarah the notecard. Two titles on it. Merlin Stone, When God Was A Woman. Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.

"I should read these?" she asked, taking the card.

"You should throw them in the trash," Dr. Kline sniffed. "They're feminist revisionist crap and get everything wrong. But their revision has _vision_ , Sarah Williams, and that's often worth more than an educated guess."

"Thank you," Sarah said, sliding the card into her backpack. "Can I come back on Monday?" She reached out and shook the old professor's hand, which was both fragile and strong in her own.

"Say, seven o'clock if you're determined to come. That's a.m., not p.m. The older I get, the earlier I like to work. Be on time. Now shoo. That's bound to be Henry clumping up my stairs." Dr. Kline turned her face down to her desk, opening a folder stuffed full of essays. And Sarah went to class.


	24. Slut and Rectitude

 

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 24:**  
**Cigarettes After Sex: "Nothing's Going to Hurt You, Baby."**

* * *

_**Author's Note:** Two days, two updates, ah-hah-hah! *thunder rumble* I hope this makes up somewhat for the hiatus._

* * *

In Medieval Women's Literature, Sarah had only one question, but it garnered her an approving smile from Professor Fisher and, she hoped, an advance forward on her participation grade.

"I understand why Lady Rectitude" — _RECTitude_ , she thought, almost laughing aloud, _dear God, what am I, five?_ — "is the one reciting the list of women who were virtuous for their chastity and devotion. 'Rectitude' means orderly correctness, and it was correct for women to keep their sex in order, and the house and the family in order, too—"

"It's always sex with you," muttered Jasmine, who Sarah had disliked on first sight, with her buttoned-up collars and heavy unfashionable glasses and ready Bible quotes and what Sarah was uncharitably certain was a full-blown case of exercise bulimia. They'd shared the same First-Year seminar, where Jasmine had lifted a few brows by announcing, on the first day, that she was a Bible-believing Christian who refused to be ashamed of her faith. Curiously, that refusal had taken the form of trying to morally top everyone from a pious pose of submission. Sarah's affections for her had not improved subsequently. Jasmine had turned up like a bad penny in at least one of her classes every semester.

"Do you know the origins of the word 'slut,' Jasmine?" Professor Fisher intervened smoothly. "It used to be a word applied to bad female housekeepers. Dust-bunnies were known as 'slut's wool.' The word used to be for a woman who wouldn't keep immaculate house. Now it means a woman who won't keep an immaculate vagina. Go on, Sarah."

"Thanks. So, my question is, why are all the lady-prophets included on Rectitude's list? One of these things is not like the others. Clean house, clean happy children, open legs for the husband, open hands for friends in need… prophecy doesn't seem to _fit_."

"I noticed that too," Ben offered shyly. He was one of only two boys in the seminar. "There's Elizabeth and the Virgin Mary and Empress Theodora and Ruth, and a bunch of virtuous medieval women Pizan had make cameos, but then there are all these… witches. Medea, the Queen of Sheba, Cassandra, the Sibyl."

"Single women, too," Audrey pointed out. "No husbands or children. Ben's right. It seems out of place."

"Well," Professor Fisher asked. "I suppose I could ask you to think through the problem. What's de Pizan's goal with her book?"

"To point out the godly and good roles women are meant to play," Jasmine said, primly and promptly. Sarah wanted to kick her, but settled for rolling her eyes. Her feelings were obviously shared; there weren't audible moans, but the adversarial tension Jasmine always created was close to breaking out in some Protestant-burning—at least in several imaginations.

"Jasmine has a point," Professor Fisher said, silencing the disgruntlement and soothing some of the feathers. "De Pizan project is certainly to point out the proper roles for women. Not in the form of lecturing or punishment, as was common with her male peers, but by showing good example. By opening doors for women, not closing them. By giving praise to role models."

"What kind of good role model for women is the Queen of Sheba meant to be, then? And all these other tricky single women?"

"We'll let Sarah answer that," Professor Fisher said with finality. "She asked the question."

"Great," Sarah said, thumping her brow with two fingers. "Well, if Pizan is trying to show the good and godly work of women, and she placed all those _witches_ —" she emphasized the word while looking a dagger at Jasmine, still preening over scoring a point — "with the virtues of rectitude," and here Sarah did finally snicker, "It might mean that… magic and prophecy and spiritual leadership are just as important for women as keeping a clean house and dinner on the table? That a woman's magic can be... good?"

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Exodus 22:18," Jasmine snapped.

_"Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together." Deuteronomy 22:11,_ Sarah thought to herself, fantasizing about pistol-whipping Jasmine with her own Bible. _So if that sweater is a cotton-poly blend, maybe rethink using the Old Testament without considering what the New has to say about motes and beams and eyes. Bitch_. But of course, she kept it inside. Jasmine was just a silly and aggravating girl, who would one day grow up to be a silly and aggravating woman, and raise a pack of silly and aggravating children and keep the idiotic world turning in its silly and aggravating way.

"The Sibyl is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel," Sarah said instead. "In Heaven too, maybe. Not in spite of her magic, but _because_ of it. And Pizan shows her as virtuous. So yes, I think maybe all these witches are there to show women that they can have this type of power, and that power in a woman isn't… innately wrong, in itself? It's… all in how you use it. Lady Rectitude gives that list because it's actually right and proper for a woman to use magic, so long as it's … used in the service of others. Ugh. No. That still sucks. Why is a woman's magic is only good if she's doing something for men?"

"Either way, it sounds like an intriguing midterm essay topic, Sarah," Professor Fisher said, smiling, in that intense way that indicated it was likely the only topic she would accept from her. Sarah sighed through her nose and tried to keep a low profile through the rest of the class hour.

"Whore," Jasmine muttered at her as they slipped through the building door on their way out.

"I fuck demons and play with fire," Sarah said, bouncing past her. "You'd be a lot happier if you followed my example. Have a good weekend." Sarah floated over it all, feeling virtuous, feeling full of rectitude, ready for her last two classes of the day to be similarly put away, wanting to break as many rules of patriarchal virtue as possible, and getting away scot-free.

* * *

Nevertheless, as the late winter day turned perceptibly to darkness, Sarah found herself full of a kind of dread. Her bag was packed with three books, one change of clothes, and the potent box. She was clean even to the tips of her scrubbed toenails, wearing her extant lingerie under her freshly laundered jeans and sweater, and had a copy of a Robert Frost poem she'd memorized in her back pocket. Only the first half of the poem—Jareth had requested poetry, but he hadn't been specific.

_Some say the world will end in fire,_   
_Some say in ice._   
_From what I've tasted of desire_   
_I hold with those who favor fire._

The second half, of hate and ice, didn't suffice. It made her think of second thoughts, and danger, and a fear about her own potential frigidity.

It was a pleasant dread. She trusted Jareth enough to make things not abysmal for her, at least. She wanted to know him, in the Biblical sense, wanted to be known by him. If she had to pay a price of a little pain, she was willing to have the pain. Not craving it, but willing to have it for the pleasure she had faith in. For him, even, if a little of her pain gave him a little pleasure. And feeling a bit disgusted with herself, with this cold and calculating lust that made her thoughts seem not her own, the phone rang.

She looked at it. There was still time to back off, or change her mind—withdraw consent. To withdraw into an isolated and increasingly angry virginity.

"I don't want him for his sake," Sarah told the ringing phone. "I want him for mine."

Or would it be the screams again?

She picked up the phone. "Hello?"

It turned out to be neither of these things. It turned out to be something much, much worse.

"Darling," said Linda, in a voice like old leather cracking under a veneer of oil. "How nice to speak with you, after all this time."


	25. Mater Malum

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 25:**   
**White Town: "Your Woman"**   
**Bleachers: "Don't Take the Money"**

* * *

Multiple scenarios unfolded in her mind, immediate and powerful, offering themselves like a crossroads of branching paths to ultimately unknown destinations.

In the first, she saw herself hanging up the phone, and having it ring again. She kicked it away with her heel, as if it were a poisonous spider. And then the phone continued to ring for the remainder of the evening, and she was caught between the fear of her mother and the fear that it was Jareth, calling to grant her permission to come and spread her legs for him. When she told him of Linda's phone call, he proposed a course of action that seemed reasonable to their mutual fears, and she followed him down into a Hell paved with orgasmic intentions.

In the second, she hung up the phone and moved like a shot, running away from her mother and running to Jareth. Her mother, anticipating this very response, instructed her driver to follow her daughter to the ratty basement in Northtown, heavy car-phone in her withered hand, a predatory smile on her bloody red mouth. And finding him, vulnerable and unready, she did something to hurt him, even kill him, and Sarah was forced to take bloody revenge, and then to pick up the pieces of a life that seemed unutterably banal without him... and completely untethered without her.

There were other branching paths, but these two led to all the rest of these. She could almost see these two choices, like doors guarded by tatterdemalion grotesques, or doors with faces embedded upon them. Jareth's face, Linda's face: never her own face.

_My mother is afraid of me_ , Sarah thought. _She doesn't want to talk to me. She wants to push me through one of those two doors. So I must not choose either._

She swallowed her fear. Literally swallowed; she could feel it like a heavy stone hanging slightly upward of her breastbone, wanting to come back up like heartburn. If she had judged wrongly, she was doomed. Following her panic, she felt rage. It was a fire, but she'd become good at shepherding fire. She banked it low, and spoke to her mother for the first time in over three years.

"Hello, Linda," Sarah said, gratified that her voice sounded calm, even cold. "Tell me what you want." There wasn't any conclusive proof that the witch's voice was effective over the phone, but there was hardly any proof that it wasn't. She gambled. It was a two-way connection.

"I just wanted to hear your voice, darling. And to know how you were."

"We're going to have a conversation with each other as if what happened was… some sort of fight over… hemlines and Christmas card lists? You _killed_ people. You tried to kill _me_."

"Darling…" Sarah's teeth ached inside her mouth, ached particularly in the front, where three of them had been broken three years ago. And thereafter, regrown. But the ache of injury remained. "No need to raise your voice. It's so boring when you resort to vulgar theatrics."

_I hate you_ , Sarah thought. The greater part of her hatred was that her mother had never allowed her to have her own feelings; there was only room on the world's stage for Linda, Linda, Linda. She hadn't considered that her third option would hurt her so badly.

"Linda," Sarah said, and an image filled her head, of Jareth talking down to her, precise, uninterested in her own teenage sense of self-importance, using her own ego as a weapon against herself. She imagined she was Jareth, speaking to her mother, who was herself at sixteen. "If you don't tell me what you really want in the next minute, I'm going to have to kill you. And it will be worth it just to have you out of my hair."

Linda laughed, and her laugh was the same as it had always been, the same melodious laugh like the tinkling of little bells, a girl's laughter. "Oh, Sarah. How nice it is, to be able to speak to you like an adult. Let me put your fears at ease. I vow, upon my life and my magic, that I will never again work against your life or toward your death, physical or spiritual. Now will you listen to me?"

Whatever else Sarah had expected of Linda's opening gambit, it hadn't been a surrender. "I'm listening," she said. "What do you want from me?"

There was a pause, and when Linda spoke next, her voice was strange. Sarah realized a split-second later that the strangeness came from the unmistakable tang of sincere humility. "I need to communicate with Jareth."

It was Sarah's turn to laugh, but her laugh was bitter and short. "And you want me to act as a go-between? After all that you've done to him—and me? You must be crazy, thinking I'd ever do you any favors. Or desperate."

"It's the latter," Linda said quietly. "I'm not asking for a favor. I'm negotiating a bargain with a formidable witch. Like for like. An even trade. Would you like to know what I'm offering?"

Her courage sinking, Sarah made a noncommittal noise of assent.

"Ten witches. Ten witches, the entire remaining novitiate, who will pledge themselves to you. You cannot possibly know what it is to have this kind of power, having only three. Or is it two now, darling? I suppose a duet is still prime and useful enough, and a trio has certain advantages. But a hendecavox? I'd forgotten, until the pair of you forced me into it, how inspiring that number can be."

"You can't. You can't possibly have them. You've got no voice because you've got no magic." Sarah's throat felt very dry.

"Darling, I've had them for the past two years and more. For all your final stroke was quite a work of art, there was one part of my magic that you couldn't touch."

"Money," Sarah said in a paper-fine whisper.

"Money," Linda agreed. "It's almost as seductive as a well-endowed demon, applied in correct measure to the young and hungry. Those little idiots practically got in line to sell themselves to me. And let me tell you, darling, for one who has no power of her own any more, drawing it from others is _quite_ the rush. I never knew what I was missing, until you made me a crone."

"I don't believe you," Sarah said, wishing she didn't. "You would have done something. You would have hurt me, or killed me. You would have gotten revenge."

"I would be a liar if I denied the thought never crossed my mind," Linda agreed blithely.

"Why now, then?" Sarah asked, head spinning. "And why on earth would you give up your… chorus, if it's all you've got?"

"Oh, I felt something, a few days ago. Something I set upon your insipid stepmother, something that came back to me. Such a very little thing, but it was enough. Just as a very little yeast suffices to leaven the dough. It won't take very long to revive myself now, with _that_ inside me. It was intriguing to note that it had _his_ savor, and not yours. Tell me, darling daughter, did it truly take three years to coax him to do your bidding, or was it him who needed the time to coax _you_?"

Sarah clapped her hand over the phone and pounded it and pounded it softly into her mattress, cursing. "You'll give up the ten witches if I arrange for you to and Jareth to speak?"

"More," Linda said, and her voice was her most gentle, her most dangerously persuasive because it was the least wheedling. "I can teach you to be Queen of a coven. I can teach you how to make chords and chords of the voices of power, duets and septets and commons and primes. I can teach you how to make the magic to silence Heaven or draw down the moon. I can teach you to chant away death in his cold cloud, or to bring forth such life that every human being within seven generations shares in your bloodline and sees through your eyes. Do you want it?"

Desire sent tingles up and down her spine, pinpricks of ice and not fire. Power. Power. The power to have the world exactly as she wanted it. It was potent drink, and the only hesitation that her conscience could muster was a vision of a woman being burned to death in front of a jeering smoke-choked crowd. The old warning, the patriarchal warning: _Here are the consequences for women who lay hands on what is theirs by sovereign right_. To have such power that she need never depend upon anyone, nor be accountable to anyone save herself. To be Queen…

"Why would you?" Sarah choked out. "Mother… why would you?"

"I made a vow, Sarah. Ask Jareth how it was that I was cheated of my own death and my firstborn daughter's life, the next time you see him. As for why I've continued to live, especially when life itself is so tiresome... I spent eleven generations perfecting myself to give birth to you. Eleven generations, when I would much rather have been cold dust, to make a witch powerful enough to defy and defeat him. I never anticipated that the ultimate flower of my branch would refuse to be plucked. Or, worse yet, that you might allow yourself to be eternally burned by the fire you were meant to quench."

"Petty revenge, then. I won't help you with that. And you're not capable of giving a damn about the entire world, just so long as you sit on a throne atop it all."

"Stupid child, what did I just say? There will be no more thrones for me, because there will be no more _world_."

The air in her lungs seemed suddenly gone. She wanted to say something callous and indifferent, but it was impossible. Linda saved her the effort and continued once the pause became uncomfortably long for any response at all.

"Fool daughter. My greatest achievement, my direst disappointment. The auguries are clear. A newborn god, the thirteenth daughter, and the doors to ruin opened like a chimney-flue. The world is going to end. He is the fire, and you are meant to be the fuel."

_I've heard this before_ , Sarah thought, feeling angry over one more warning about where and how and with whom she was forbidden to enjoy—and also sad, because if she didn't take the warnings seriously, then she was every bit the fool she was accused of being.

"It's too late for me to bear another child and take another body, even if I had enough magic left to devote to the task. There's no one but you. You are what I promised him, centuries ago, and he thinks to have you without consequence. I won't let that happen. Control him, Sarah. Break him to your will. Better yet, destroy him. Otherwise he will most assuredly break you, and destroy the world."

"It was you," Sarah said dully. "You tore apart my room, looking for his collar."

"A pity I couldn't find it," Linda agreed. "I'd gladly die to keep you from wearing it. Better to die than to see my daughter become a slave." There was a brief pause, and Linda's voice became bright and cheery. "That's done, then. It's been lovely speaking with you. I'll dissolve the hendecavox in two days' time."

"But I haven't agreed to help you!" Sarah objected.

"Darling, dearest, sweet poppet. I asked you to help me communicate with Jareth. And you inevitably will, either trotting nimbly to spill this conversation at his feet or by coyly evading all mention. He's clever; he can see the shapes of things by the outlines of their absence. One way or another, he will learn what I've said to you. Your third option is to turn away from him completely, which would also satisfy me. Your absence from his life would communicate quite a lot to him. And," she sensed Sarah's breathless horror, "Don't feel too badly that I've won this match against you. I have more experience, after all."

"I should never have answered the phone."

"Hm," her mother agreed blithely. "And I should have named you Pandora. Goodbye for now, Sarah. Call me if you decide you want to learn more of the craft than playing with fire and suppressing your gag reflex."


	26. Bloodless Earth and Sopping Hell

* * *

**Soundtrack for chapter 26:**   
**David Bowie: "We Prick You"**   
**Tipsy: "Space Golf"**

* * *

Sarah hung up in trembling rage. _I hate you_ , she thought. _I hate you, I hate you_. "Dead and rotten," she muttered at the phone. And she felt something happen that had never happened before: she bewitched something. The rage, having nowhere else to go, seemed to come out of her eyes, and the phone squeaked and jostled as if it were a skewered rat. The bell rang dully, and the plastic seemed to bulge. Then it was still. It pulsed impossibly once more, falling off the hook, and small brown millipedes and worms began to crawl through the eyelets of the receiver, the seams where the switches met the casing. "No, no, no!" Sarah yelled. The body of her phone smoked with the stench of burning wires and bugflesh. Not wanting to touch it, she folded the mess in a towel, yanked the cord out of the wall, and looked around the room in a panic, wondering what to do with it.

The window. With only barest regret, her sneakers crunching mealworms, she tossed the entire thing out the window, towel and all. Still angry and disgusted, she deliberately smashed the last few bugs underfoot, and then was violently sick in her wastebasket.

She slumped down, letting the wall hold her upright. There were smears of brown and yellow goo on her floor, and the segmented bodies of worms. She dry heaved once or twice more, but nothing came up. Her head lolled upward; she stared at the barren overhead light in its industrial fixture and tried to remember who she was.

_Now I am going to get up_ , she said to herself. _Now I am getting up. I am standing up now._ This was an excellent plan, delivered from herself to herself in a competent and optimistic inner voice. _Now I am going to get up._ And yet she didn't. She had sicked up her anger with her dinner, and without it she was empty. The bulb was covered by a pentagonal prism with thousands of infinitesimal pyramids barbing its surface. The better to refract light? She didn't know.

She felt rather than saw the window blow open in a sudden gust of cold wind. Either she hadn't latched it completely, or the unavoidable caller had simply let himself in. Sarah hung her head and saw his shadow on the wall move effortlessly from owl to man. And he stepped to her lightly and all she cared to look at were his boots, sharp-toed and shiny as black mirrors.

_Now I am going to tell him to go away_ , that inner voice, endless optimist, suggested cheerfully to her. Sarah only turned her head aside so she wouldn't be caught in his eyes. She said nothing.

And perhaps nothing needed to be said. Certainly he said nothing, and was nearly as silent as owl's wings. Blowing glitter fell down from the trailing edges of his garments and into her field of vision. He only stepped forward so the tips of his boots reflected the vaguest outline of both of them. It ought to have felt intimidating to have him stand over her, but it was not.

_Now he will talk to you and you can tell him to go away_. But he didn't talk, and he didn't go away. _Last night I saw upon the stair, a little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away_ _._ But she didn't have to tell him to go away if he didn't speak to her, or touch her, or do anything but be there near her.

In a strange way, it was comforting. Her inner optimist eventually shut her yap and stopped dictating plans, and Jareth was in the room with her, like a hundred-dollar-bill tucked into her bra. All potential, all safety, all hers. It was a stupid notion, given what she knew about him, but it was comforting nonetheless.

How much time passed? Afterward, she was never quite certain. Hours and hours, moments. It could easily have been either. She was the one who broke that good silence.

"How did you know to come?" she asked quietly, and the sting of acid was still on her breath.

"Your line was busy. And then it wasn't. I can only assume it was—"

"Stop," Sarah said. "Don't say her name."

"I told you she would come for you. Well, what did she offer? To bring you back under her rule? I assume it was something juicy, or you would have answered my call."

"I didn't answer because I turned my phone into bugs," Sarah said.

He was silent, considering her words. "Would you like me to go?" he asked.

_Yes. Go away and take my problems with you_ , she thought, but instead she hid her head on her folded arms. "No."

"Sarah," he said, in a tone of incipient irritation, but again she said "no," and he mercifully withdrew attempts to manipulate her with his sternness. Those high-heeled boots turned, and she felt the movement of air and magic in the room. She risked a look at him. Black armor, impeccable, collar of doom framing his long white neck. Gloved hands making subtle passes in the air. The trash-can exchanging places in reality with her towel-wrapped phone. The phone, levitating, exploding apart in thirty pieces, insects dripping down like rain, the phone coming together in a midair crash in which every part seemed to realign itself. And then, ridiculously, incongruously, Jareth in that fantastical armor on his hands and knees searching for the jack against the baseboard and plugging it back in. Where the ragged hem of his cloak stroked over the floor, the floor came away clean.

"Better," he said, sitting down on the floor against the opposite wall, catching her brief and weary smile. "Better?"

Sarah ventured a small nod. "What do I owe you?"

"Let's say I did this for myself and not you, and call your account square."

"Okay," Sarah said. "Jareth?"

"Hm?" He balanced his lighter atop one finger.

"Would you bother if I was just… normal?"

"That's a difficult question."

"So. No, then." Sarah sighed, feeling altogether terrible and decidedly un-special.

"No, it's difficult to answer because it has too many answers. I don't… " he shook his head. "It's hard to explain. I can't see the future. We—I—can see thousands of paths diverging from one moment, one decision. I can see every path forward, and cusps of choosing in the past that lead to other paths. Other choices, other predictions, other lives, other stories. Some of them simultaneous. But no matter what I do, Sarah, I can't see any path in this life, any way chosen or unchosen that doesn't eventually lead me to you. You're inevitable." He seemed to find his own words a bit depressing; she had little sympathy, being caught in the same destiny.

"So, yes," she said. "And in the stories where I'm normal?"

"An ordinary girl," he said, with a small grimace of distaste. He flicked the lighter upward and caught it in a casual fist. His eyes met hers with a shock. "You want me to do to you what I've done to the other witches I've caught? What you did to your mother? Burn the magic out of you?"

Not trusting her voice, Sarah nodded.

"Why on earth would you want that?"

She shrugged and looked vaguely around the room, as if the four walls explained everything.

"I _could_ do it," he admitted, turning his head aside to stare at her with one eye. "It would be fair, wouldn't it? It would be very like what you did for me, when you set me free. I could take your magic, take your memories. You could have a boring, ordinary life without a hint of the supernatural in it. Some prosaic career as an uninspired kindergarten teacher. Is that what you want?"

She broke his gaze to stare at her clenched hands in her lap.

"Despicable," he said blandly.

"Why?" she choked out. "Why is it so awful to want something normal?" She wouldn't look at him again. "Some place where the stakes aren't so high?"

"Because that's not you. One of the things I always admired about you, Sarah, was that your pretty little fantasies weren't of the Oz variety. Dorothy, Wendy, Alice, sojourning through strange and magnificent countries only so they could get home to little-girlhood, free of blood and pain and risk and sex. The idiocity of the American girl. I'd thought you were different. Was I wrong?"

"No," she said defiantly.

" _Good_. With the past written as it is, there are three most likely outcomes of you abjuring magic now. In one, you die to save me. Another, I die to save you. And in the third, we die to save each other. It has a certain romantic flair, certain death, don't you think?" The suppressed anger and hurt in his voice made her look at him again.

"What about the one where I die?" Sarah asked. "What do you do in that case?"

"I destroy the one who killed you. If I survive the fight, I wait for Toby to grow up and to father a pretty blonde daughter with a touch of the gift." Jareth closed his eyes. "And I regret you every day of my life."

His words shook her. Like nitroglycerin, like a glowstick, she felt herself regain some inner light. It was the color of anger. "And what happens if I go with you tonight? Do I end up destroying the world just for the sake of one good fuck?"

"Your first time is unlikely to meet the standards of a world-ending 'good fuck,' Sarah, but one can always count on you to be the possible exception." He held out one hand, beseeching, over an upthrust knee. "Come here to me, and I'll tell you."

She shifted herself, preparing to stand, but he turned his begging hand into a wagging finger. "Hands and knees, if you would. One likes to feel appreciated."

"No," she said, standing up, spine straight, and crossed to him in three strides. She kicked his knees apart to make room for her own feet. And she leaned down and put her hand over his breast, the place where his amulet hand hung, and stared into his weird eyes. His expression was one of arrogant enjoyment, as if his position were the dominant one. The breastplate of his armor was sharp with pointed edges. Nevertheless, when she squeezed, it rippled under her hand as if it were wet clay. And Jareth himself writhed, as if she were hurting him and giving him intense pleasure. "Tell me. What are the _stakes_ , Jareth? What are your plans? And what part do I play in them?"

He only breathed a laugh, teeth sharp and prominent under snarling, smiling lips. "I told you already. We're opening a door."

"To _where_?" she shook him by the scruff of his chest. His high collar melted like wet paint into the wall.

"To my kingdom. To the world below." And he didn't need to say the rest, because Sarah's inner optimist had turned pessimist and supplied the answer.

"To Hell," she said grimly, and let him go.

"So melodramatic," he drawled.

"Says the man wearing fuck-me heels and eyeliner," Sarah snapped. She rubbed her forehead. "Rain of blood, demons with pitchforks, lakes of fire, all that?"

"I was thinking of giving first rights of entry to the fae," Jareth said nonchalantly. He sat where she'd left him, for all the world like the floor was a throne. "And catch-as-catch can after that. Including, eventually, the… guests currently residing in my realm."

"This is why you didn't tell me outright," Sarah said. "You knew I'd never agree to help with something like this."

"I didn't tell you because you make the most appalling assumptions. The Labyrinth isn't Hell any more than L.A. is New York. It's not a place of punishment. It's a… how do I put this?"

"A trash heap," Sarah suggested bitterly.

"Don't insult my kingdom again," Jareth said flatly. "It's not the habitation of Christian demons, or even precisely an afterlife. It's a world below. It's an oubliette. It's a place to put things to forget about them. It's where the fae went when they paid the teind, first with goblins and imps and then with every other magical creature they could put in their path, until only they themselves were left and then all but vanished from the earth. And it's mine. I found it, I built it up, I tend it. Mine. And I intend to use you to help me open that door, because my kingdom is dying. Just as your world is dying."

"What?"

"What?" He mocked her. "You heard me. Your world, this world. Witches are killing it. It's dying. It's the serpent eating its own tail, and just about at the neck at the moment. There are forces at work who would be perfectly happy to let it collapse in on itself. Fortunately for you, I am not among them."

"Explain!" she shouted in frustration.

He stood up, black armor flaking back into place in thick wisps of ash. "That was perilously close to a command," he murmured. Sarah found herself retreating for a moment.

"Please," she said resentfully.

"Witches," he said. "They're meant to be gatekeepers between the natural and the supernatural. But every so often, when a coven grows entrenched enough, powerful enough—let's say, thirteen generations' worth—they become dangerous. They only let enough power eke through to sustain themselves. Think of themselves as your mother writ large. They kill their most dangerous young ones, the ones who might rebel or splinter away, and eat up their powerl. Of the seventeen of you at your novitiate, I would bet the crones planned on allowing perhaps five or six to survive. Instead, all of you did. You're welcome. An old and corrupt coven becomes an institution in itself, while around it in space and time, they salt the ground and destroy every magical thing they can't use. The world goes cold. But you and I can let a little light back in. You only need to say _yes_."

"Too much," Sarah moaned. "Just too fucking much."

"You understand my reticence, then. But I'll remind you that refusing decision is _making_ a decision, Sarah. We still have our bargain; you have been fully advised as to the consequences of a yes or a no. So." He held out his hand for her. "Is it yes, or no?"

"Now?" she shrieked. "I have to answer you _now_?"

His face was like something carved from stone. His supplicating hand did not waver.

_He wants to use me,_ she thought. _Like I'm some sort of… whore_.

Another thought: _He's never said that I'm something to use. But I've said that about him. Sex and power and everything else. He's been more humane than I've been._

And she saw the lines of tension bracketing his mouth, tight with some feeling.

"Answer me this," Sarah said, "And my answer will be the same." She considered how to phrase the question. "Would you still want me if I told you no, and want me even with the worst possible outcome of that no?"

His façade cracked into a slow and rueful smile. "Yes," he said. "And yes. Always."

She took his hand, and all the trembling was on her part. It wasn't fear or anger. It was relief in making a decision, and excitement at the idea that it was the wrong one. "Yes," she said.

* * *

_**Author's Notes:** _   
_The poem quoted in this chapter is "Antigonish" by William Hughes Mearns. The previous chapter contains a quote from Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice."_

_FrancesOsgood is back after a lengthy hiatus with a sequel to her story "Seven." It's called "Labyrinth: Once and Forever" and so far it's shaping up to be an action-packed world-travelling S/J adventure in grand old style. Check it out over at Fanfiction.net when you have a chance._


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